Lauralton Hall turned away by dominant New Fairfield

FAIRFIELD — Make it five in a row for New Fairfield.

The fourth-seeded Rebels scored the first 16 goals of the game and blitzed 14thseeded upstart Lauralton Hall, 16-1, winning its fifth consecutive CIAC Class S girls' lacrosse championship Saturday morning at Sacred Heart University.

“It's not an easy thing to do, but playing girls' lacrosse is not an easy job at New Fairfield,” New Fairfield coach Greg Schwarz said. “For them, it's been special. It's hard and it's difficult.”

For the New Fairfield seniors, they've battled through a career where they lost a chance to win a title in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but still won three titles.

“With COVID and everything with that, it's been hard,” said senior Ava Romanello, who had four goals and three assists. “It's unheard of to win five straight, but it's been great to be a part of.”

It took New Fairfield (19-3) some time to get going as Lauralton Hall kept the Rebels scoreless for the first 8:51 of the contest.

“We played really well for the first nine minutes where they didn't score, and not many teams were able to do that,” Lauralton Hall coach Meg Carney said. “New Fairfield just came out stronger and we were trying to slow them down.”

Once the Rebels (16-3) got on the board, they didn't stop.

Evelyn Butorac scored the Rebels first goal with 16:09 remaining, and after that, the goals came quickly.

Before the first half was over, Ava Romanello had four goals for the Rebels and both Brenna Romanello and Heather Clark added two apiece to give New Fairfield a 10-0 lead with 1:36 to play. That brought on the running clock, which the rest of the game was played under.

“We got our legs underneath us and got the draws,” Schwarz said. “We were able to find the back of the cage and eventually we got our nerves out of the way.”

In the second half, New Fairfield substituted liberally but was still able to tack on six goals to make it 16-0 with 12:03 left in the game. Ava Romanello added a pair of assists to give her three for the game.

Lydia Grillo of Lauralton

Hall (12-9) scored for the Crusaders with 31 seconds to go to break up the shutout.

The loss ended Lauralton Hall's streak of three wins in a row over higher seeded teams. The Crusaders defeated third-seeded Valley in the first round, sixthseeded Stonington in the quarterfinals and secondseeded Old Saybrook in the semifinals.

It was the second straight year in which Lauralton Hall's season ended with a loss to New Fairfield.

“Last year, we set a new standard of going to the quarterfinals and we ran into New Fairfield,” Carney said. “This year, we had so many injuries and we're here. I told the girls at halftime that they set a new standard of going to the state finals.”