(April 24, 2015) When the Worcester Prep and Saints Peter & Paul girls’ lacrosse teams went head-to-head on March 31 in Easton, the Lady Mallards won 15-3. Their second match-up was much closer.
Last Friday, the Sabres traveled to Berlin to take on the Mallards and it was a back-and-forth battle between the two Eastern Shore Independent Athletic Conference rivals.
Goals were traded in the first half, and at the break the score was tied 4-4.
The visiting Sabres pulled ahead 5-4 three minutes into the second half, but Prep senior captain Sophie Brennan answered soon after.
Junior Grace Tunis gave Worcester the go-ahead goal and sophomore Karlie Southcomb boosted the team’s advantage to 7-5 with 18:17 remaining in the game.
Saints Peter & Paul cut the Prep squad’s lead to one 40 seconds later.
Goals by senior captain Molly Soulè and Southcomb put Worcester on top 9-6 with 14 minutes to play.
The Sabres netted three unanswered shots to even the score at 9-all with 3:29 left in the competition.
With about a minute and a half on the clock, Brennan was fouled and awarded a free shot.
As she prepared to take her shot, Brennan said several things ran through her head.
“I knew that we needed a goal because it was tied and it was pretty heated,” she said. “I was just thinking how much I really want to win and how we need this goal. I knew what to do, just concentrate on putting it in the goal.”
She put the ball in the back of the net to provide Worcester with a 10-9 lead.
“It was exciting to score the goal and it was definitely nice to pull out a close game, but there’s no reason this game should have been as close as it was,” Brennan said. “We’re going to see them again and it can’t be this close. It can be anybody’s game when it’s this close. We’ve got to keep our heads up. I think we got down a little bit, but we pulled it together and it was a good win.”
Brennan finished the game with three goals. Southcomb contributed with four goals and an assist. Tunis (one assist), Soulè (one assist) and sophomore Leigh Lingo scored one goal apiece.
Freshman Sophie Bandorick earned her first varsity start in goal for Worcester. She stopped 11 Sabres’ shots.
“[Bandorick] was really stepping up her game at practice, so we wanted to give her the opportunity to show that on the field,” said Prep Coach Leigh Anne Flounlacker.
The Mallards were lucky to come away with the win after their less than stellar performance.
“We didn’t really play well. We turned the ball over an unfathomable amount of times,” Brennan said. “We made horrible passing decisions, me included. It just wasn’t our day.”
“I think we were just playing really sloppy pretty much the entire game. It was really frustrating because I felt like we were doing well for a few games in a row, transitioning the ball and protecting it and [Friday] we were throwing it into double teams, running into double teams, dropping passes … I feel like once one person starts dropping the ball it really trickles down the whole entire team,” Flounlacker said. “They have so much talent and so much heart and they hustle so hard to everything so it’s unfortunate when we make silly mistakes because they’re beating themselves.”
The Salisbury School Dragons are set to come to Berlin on Saturday for a game at noon against the Mallards.
Worcester and Stephen Decatur will battle on Monday at 4 p.m. on the Mallards’ field. Flounlacker was a standout lacrosse player for Decatur. She graduated in 2011.
