St. Paul’s girls lacrosse tops Maryvale, 16-4, in semifinal
Faced with the daunting task of rebuilding her defense early this season, St. Paul’s coach Mary Gagnon was anything but rattled.
“It’s always about peaking at the right time,” Gagnon frequently told her team.
On Tuesday, in the semifinals of the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference tournament, the two-time defending champion Gators showed they have peaked.
Frannie Hahn, Marleigh O’Day and Natalie Shurtleff each scored three goals as host St. Paul’s scored the first six and blanketed No. 3 Maryvale defensively, giving up precious few scoring opportunities in a 16-4 win. Junior Susan Radebaugh made 11 saves for the No. 2 Gators, who got sterling defensive play from a unit that graduated standouts such as All-Metro Player of the Year Madison Beale (Duke) and Olivia Rose (Stanford).
In their stead, players such as sophomore Sophia Herrera, juniors Kira Balis and Christina King and senior Julia Lee stepped up to help keep Maryvale off the scoreboard for the final 23:19.
“I think over the course of this season we’ve all grown together,” Radebaugh said. “I just think we were able to anticipate Maryvale’s offense. We went over it the other day in practice, and I think that we were just able to send the early slides and recover fast, and I think that was crucial.”
St. Paul’s (17-2) advances to Friday night’s IAAM A Conference championship game at USA Lacrosse headquarters in Sparks, where the Gators will face top-ranked McDonogh, a 13-4 winner over No. 4 Glenelg Country in the other semifinal.
The Gators fell to the Eagles, 10-9, during the regular season. McDonogh is currently the consensus No. 2 team in the nation, and St. Paul’s No. 3.
To get there, St. Paul’s first had to get past a Lions team that it defeated by only a goal back in March. That task, however, was made easier Tuesday when the Gators jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first 16:44.
Despite a pair of goals from senior Sam Paradise, Maryvale (16-3) simply couldn’t get much going offensively and couldn’t keep up with the Gators’ masterful transition game.
Now, the task turns to a rematch with McDonogh with the championship on the line. Players admit that they’ve salivated over the chance to win three straight A Conference titles.
“It’s definitely been a goal of ours this year, but we’re just taking it game by game,” Hahn said. “As our coach likes to say, next game is the best game.”
“I’m sure they’re going to come with their ‘A’ game, we’re going to come with ours,” Gagnon added. “It’s great for Baltimore, it’s great for the IAAM. It’s the two best teams, so it’s what it should be.”
Other girls lacrosse scores:
McDonogh 13, Glenelg Country 4: No. 1 McDonogh has a much different team than last year’s after graduating 14 seniors.
But junior midfielders Remi Schaller and Amanda Lawson, among the few returners, remember the emotions after losing in last year’s Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference semifinal.
The Eagles, determined to not have that feeling again, jumped out to a five-goal lead and didn’t look back in a 13-4 win over No. 4 Glenelg Country on Tuesday in an IAAM A Conference semifinal. The Eagles advance to Friday’s tournament final against No. 2 St. Paul’s.
“Our season got cut short last season in the semifinals, so I think we came out harder,” Schaller said. “We haven’t been to the championship since our freshman season and we lost, so we want to come back and win a championship like we’ve been planning on.”
Midfielder Ayiana Rippin opened the scoring less than three minutes into the game on a feed from Lawson. Then Kate Levy, Schaller and Lawson each scored to push the lead to four. Schaller and Lawson’s goals came on 8-meter opportunities created by winning one-on-one matchups.
Meanwhile, the Eagles’ defense was stifling, shutting off Glenelg Country’s prolific scorers Regan and Blair Byrne. McDonogh effectively denied the Dragons from attacking the middle and posted its fifth consecutive game allowing five goals or fewer.
“I think they’re really coming together as a unit,” McDonogh coach Taylor Cummings said of the defense as her team improved to 19-1.
— Jacob Steinberg
Boys lacrosse
Calvert Hall 6, Loyola Blakefield 5: The annual rivalry game between Calvert Hall and Loyola Blakefield lacrosse that wraps up the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference regular season had much more at stake Tuesday: the second seed and a coveted first-round bye in the playoffs.
It took a complete team effort for host Calvert Hall to beat No. 2 Loyola Blakefield, 6-5, but the No. 3 Cardinals had three players in particular who stood out.
Sophomore goalie Alex Swartz was sensational with 13 saves, including eight in a first half that ended tied at 1. On a day when goals were tough to come by, senior midfielder Ryan Botek scored three, including the one that gave the Cardinals the lead for good. And senior faceoff specialist Jackson Strickland was indeed special, with the last of his 11 faceoff wins coming with 24 seconds left to secure the win.
Defending champion and No. 1 McDonogh (9-1) and Calvert Hall (8-2) bypass Friday’s quarterfinals and head straight to next Tuesday’s semifinals. On Friday, No. 3 seed Loyola (7-3) hosts sixth seed St. Paul’s (6-4) with fourth-seeded St. Mary’s (7-3) the home team against fifth seed Boys’ Latin (7-3).
On Tuesday, a packed stadium watched the Cardinals close out their regular-season league slate — which started with a humbling 13-3 loss against St. Mary’s on March 31 — with their fifth straight win.
— Glenn Graham
St. Mary’s 9, Severn 8 (OT): Severn boys lacrosse had a ton of emotion going into Tuesday afternoon’s game against St. Mary’s.
Simply playing the archrival on their home field was enough to fire up the Admirals. However, Severn had added incentive going into this year’s meeting. The Admirals were playing the game for the younger brother of senior short stick defensive midfielder Jack Shields, Sully an eighth grader who will be attending Severn next year and was recently diagnosed with cancer.
All the Severn players and coaches wore T-shirts that read “Smile Like Sully” on the front.
It was also the final game for 21 Severn seniors, nine of whom will continue their lacrosse careers at the collegiate level.
The Admirals fed off all that energy and emotion, dominating the game on both ends of the field in taking a commanding six-goal lead into intermission.
However, there would be no storybook ending for Severn.
Senior attackmen Jake Kucinski and Nick Golini led the way as St. Mary’s rallied to beat the Admirals, 9-8, in overtime at Barbour Family Stadium. Kucinski scored three goals, while Golini totaled two goals and an assist for the Saints (14-4), who outscored the Admirals 8-1 after halftime.
Softball
Crofton 10, Northeast-AA 1: Crofton’s historic first Anne Arundel County championship started with Marley Connor.
There was a reason Northeast-AA intentionally walked the sophomore in the first inning. The Eagles knew better than to risk giving Connor a pitch she liked with a runner on third.
But they did not do the same in the fourth when empty bases gave Northeast a false sense of comfort.
“I was expecting them to pitch around me. I knew they were going to throw me outside,” Connor said. “That’s when I stepped on the plate and drove through the ball.”
Connor’s game-tying solo home run sparked an onslaught as the Cardinals took the lead in the fifth and piled on in the seventh on their way to a 10-1 victory at Bachman Sports Complex Tuesday night. It was the Cardinals’ first appearance in the championship game in only their second varsity season. They handed Northeast its first county loss of the spring.