Beski continues to lead Chippewa United in Friday win over St. Clair Shores Unified
Brooke Beski is writing an outstanding final chapter to her lacrosse career with Chippewa United.
The senior attack has scored 16 goals in four games this season, including three on Friday in an 18-0 win against St. Clair Shores Unified in a Macomb Area Conference game.
“She’s definitely coming alive this year,” said coach Chrissy Haller.
Beski, who started playing lacrosse as a freshman, said that developing her stick skills has been the key to her improvement.
“I’ve been working on better shooting,” Beski said. “Stick skills just take a lot of time, a lot of practice. You have to spend a lot of time on your own, playing against the wall — things like that.”
Beski opened the season with six goals in a 13-10 win against Dearborn Divine Child and has scored at least three times in each game since. “I’m playing with a lot more confidence,” she said. “There’s real good team chemistry this year.”
Chippewa United, which is made up of players from Chippewa Valley and Dakota, has won three of its four games.
Haller expected a good season. “We started in 2019 and we’ve been getting better every year,” she said.
Haller said last year was a surprise. The team started with some double-figure victories.
“I started to think, maybe we’re pretty good,” she said.
Chippewa has a strong attack and a solid midfield corps.
“Our attack is strong passing,” Haller said. “Our middies are really strong. We have two full lines of middies that are equally talented. I’m very confident that whoever I put out there is going to do a good job.
“We have a very new defense with only veteran varsity
player on defense.”
Kayla Zielinski opened the scoring early in the first quarter and Chippewa came out of the quarter with a 6-0 lead. It added six more goals in the second quarter.
Grace Gutmann and Chloe Moses also scored three times for Chippewa and Angela Messina tallied twice. Megan Pickett, Mackenzie Kaul, Bella Cavataio, Jessika Vushaj, Skylar Weir, Kate Marshall and Madelynn Molnar added a goal apiece.
Shores Unified continued to show improvement in only its fourth varsity game.
“They’re improving,” said coach Jen Pangborn. “They’re getting more and more experience and they keep cheering for each other. They’re having a lot of fun. They keep pushing and keep trying and every game gets a little better.”
It’s the important stick skills that the Shores squad needs to develop.
“Their cradling, they way they’re checking other players and their passing,” Pangborn said. “We’re trying to work on those things in practice and games keep popping up. These girls just started playing earlier this month. It’s been a fun journey.
“All these girls are excited to be playing. They keep developing new cheers. Other coaches have come up to me and said, ‘I wish I could get my team to cheer like yours.’”
Despite the scores, Amber Samuel has been playing well in goal and made several saves in Friday’s game.