Everyone on the Skaneateles girls lacrosse team had to play their part in order to pull out Saturday’s 14-13 overtime victory over Fayetteville-Manlius at Hyatt Stadium, especially in the game’s decisive moments.
A Lakers defense torn up by 12 Hornets goals in the first half had to step up and make crucial stops during the second half to create the opportunity for a comeback.
When it was absolutely needed, goalie Emily Baldwin made a point-blank stop on F-M’s Gemma Adonizio with seven seconds left in regulation, keeping the game tied, 13-13. It was Baldwin’s ninth save of the afternoon.
Down a player due to a yellow card, the Lakers almost had to win the OT draw, and despite game-long struggles in that department against the Hornets’ Sydney DiGralomo, Abby Kuhns took that draw and grabbed it out of the air to earn possession.
And ultimately, Kyla Sears had to do her part, which was show why she was the best player on the field.
Already with five goals on the afternoon, Sears earned a free-position shot with 50 seconds left in the second half. Just a few moments earlier, F-M goalie Liz Brady had stopped Sears up close, but the senior midfielder adjusted her shot, went high – and beat Brady for the tying goal.
After Kuhns snared the OT draw, the Lakers had more than a minute to kill off before returning to even strength, and given the way it had held the ball for long stretches of the second half, F-M may have expected a similar strategy, even when Sears got the ball behind the net.
Sears had other ideas. With three Hornets defenders in close pursuit, Sears wove through all of them and, just 34 seconds into the extra period, put the ball past Brady for the game-winner. It was the Lakers’ only lead of the game.
What ended with so many crucial defensive plays started with neither side able to stop anything. Three minutes into the game, Skaneateles trailed 4-1, and despite calling a time-out, the Lakers saw the deficit grow to 8-3 before nine minutes had elapsed.
The comeback began with three straight Lakers goals, two of them by Riley Brogan, that made it 8-6, and from there Skaneateles exchanged goals amid a furious pace that left F-M in front, 12-9, at halftime, led by the sister tandem of Keara and Katie Shanley, who had four goals apiece.
Knowing it could not win if that pace was maintained, the Lakers drew out its possessions in the second half, helped by the stops that defenders Christina Ciaccio, Olivia Dobrovosky and Grace Dower were making as it kept F-M off the board for more than 22 minutes.
With 4:07 left, Sears, with her fifth goal on a free-position shot, tied it, 12-12. Keara Shanley countered with her fifth goal 34 seconds later, but F-M would not score again, and Sears still had two more to attain.
Before all this, the Lakers got a couple of relative breathers, starting last Tuesday at Chittenango, where it shut out the Bears 18-0. Fourteen of those goals came in the first half, and Grace Dower led the way, setting a career mark by scoring four times and adding an assist.
Even in limited minutes, Sears came up with three goals and three assists, with Mae McGlynn also scoring three times andBrogan getting two goals and four assists. Olivia Navaroli and Jessica Patalino each had one goal and one assist as Kuhns, Emma Goodell, Rachel Pinney and Mikaela Terhune got single goals. Sophie Kush added an assist.
Another romp followed on Thursday night, Skaneateles handling Onondaga 18-2. This time around, the Lakers put up 12 unanswered goals in the first half and, eventually, had eight different players score twice.
Augmenting her pair of goals, Sears picked up five assists, while Navaroli had two goals and three assists. Brogan, Goodell, McGlynn, Kuhns, Dower and Abby Logan matched those two-goal efforts, with Patalino and Kush getting the other goals.
The win over F-M gave Skaneateles even more confidence, which it will need as, following Friday’s game against Bishop Ludden-Bishop Grimes (its only action this week), the Lakers will have games down the stretch against two reigning state champions, CBA (Class A) and Mount Sinai (Class C), on May 11 and 13, respectively.
