Sports: East Lyme boys, girls capture ECC lacrosse tournament championships
East Lyme erupts in second half to win 11th straight ECC title
East Lyme — All East Lyme needed to win its 11th straight Eastern Connecticut Conference tournament title was some space.
And for quite some time Thursday night, Stonington was preventing that.
“We were not getting the connection,” East Lyme junior Karlie Rowe said of the first half, after which the Vikings led just 5-3. “We were definitely crammed in there. Once space opened up, we were making passes in there.”
Rowe earned the James Courtney Most Valuable Player Award with 10 goals, as the top-seeded East Lyme girls' lacrosse team finally got its spacing down right on the way to a 16-5 victory over No. 2 Stonington, claiming yet another championship.
Caroline Healy and Hailey Gordon added two goals each and Olivia Facchini had a goal and four assists for East Lyme (16-2), which found out earlier in the day it would be missing all-state center midfielder Steph de Laforcade for the remainder of the season with a stress fracture.
Stonington, as it had in a semifinal victory over Waterford, chose to
mark an individual player one-on-one, in this case East Lyme's Elena Hynes. Hynes, who has more than 100 points to lead the Vikings in scoring, is headed to play for UConn next season.
“It worked great the first half,” Stonington coach Jeff Medeiros said. “I can't mark everybody, unfortunately. (Rowe) ends up hurting us in the end. … It's tough to stay the distance with East Lyme. They have so much talent. It's apples and oranges because there's so much talent there. They're a great team and that's a great win. I can't complain.”
In the second half, Rowe scored immediately to make it 6-3 and Facchini made it a four-goal lead, tomahawking one into the net on an assist from Hynes from behind the net.
Stonington (14-4) pulled within 7-4 when Cat Cassatta scored, but East Lyme got its next two goals in transition on assists from Julia Bates, with the Vikings avoiding the problem of being bottled up by a pair of quick strikes out ahead of the defense. Healy scored the first from Bates and Rowe the second, making it 9-4.
The Vikings outscored Stonington 112 in the second half, with a career-high goal total from Rowe, a junior, who now has 76 this season.
“She has good awareness around the cage,” East Lyme coach Phil Schneider said. “She understands. She's smart, finding the open spaces.
“… I don't know if we wore them down, necessarily, but we did a good job keeping them away from (letting them shoot directly at goalie Alex Rose). Last time we played them (2212 East Lyme victory on May 4), we let them get right on the corner of the circle, which was not fair to Alex.”
This time, Stonington was hoping to slow down East Lyme while keeping up its own production and it worked briefly, as freshman goalie Molly Banks made several key stops early.
The game was tied 3-3 on a goal by Stonington's Cassatta. East Lyme went ahead 4-3 on a goal by Rowe with 11:27 to play in the half, but Banks made a point blank save and Stonington had several shot opportunities against Rose (10 saves) before Schneider called a timeout with 3:59 to go in the half steal leading by one.
Following the timeout, Healy scored on a free position to get it to 5-3 East Lyme at the half.
Cassatta and Burgess each had two goals for Stonington, but the Bears were held scoreless for the final 12:48.
“Stonington put up a good fight. We found all the openings in the second half,” Rowe said. “We got all of our nerves out. … It's really difficult (to think about continuing the 11-season streak of winning the ECC title). It's a lot of pressure knowing you have to play well.”
“We don't really talk about that,” Schneider said of the streak of championships. “It's always the goal for us. They work hard. They know it's important. It's going to happen eventually (a loss). But it's why we are where we are, because we work hard.” v.fulkerson@theday.com