Vikings roll past Stonington in ECC final
Sager (three goals), senior Greta Schwartz, junior Meghan Nagle (goal, two assists), junior Alanna Benoit (two goals), sophomore Lillian Poletto (goal, assist) and senior Kaci Pierce (goal).
Another example of the Vikings' dominance was that Stonington only scored on free position plays.
Freshman Emma Logel scored twice and senior Ivy Goodman and sophomore Gabriella Dimock each added a goal.
"We felt that we had a good game plan," Bears head coach Jeff Medeiros said, "but key drops, key mistakes (hurt). And every time we did have a key drop, they capitalized with a goal, and slowly the game kind of got away from us."
What made East Lyme's win even more impressive was that third-seeded Stonington (14-5) had a resounding 15-5 edge on draws.
The Vikings made up for it with defense and controlling the ball. They had an outrageous 25-6 edge on ground balls.
The Bears won the first three draws of the game.
It didn't matter as the Vikings went ahead 3-0 before the game was four minutes old.
"Yes, we won the first few draws," Medeiros said. "We did a lot of good things early on but as soon as we got in position, (there'd be) a bad pass.
"A mistake, a dropped ball, (East Lyme is) going to score. And once you get behind these guys, good luck."
The Vikings led 10-3 at halftime.
"It starts with our attack," Vikings head coach Phil Schneider said. "It starts with them being smart, working in the midfield, the defense talking and communicating."
The Vikings also made a defensive adjustment going into the tournament.
"We used to play a man-to-man D," Franco said. "That worked really good and everybody knew what they were doing but when we first started to play against Fitch (in Tuesday's 187 semifinal win) we wanted to run a backer (zone) defense.
"Our backer, (junior) Bella Chambers), she got thrown into that position in 20 minutes and she learned how to do it really well. It was really impressive."