Allentown, Lawrence both playing well ahead of MCT
It has already been quite a week on the hockey field and it appears it’s only going to get better as the first round of the Mercer County Tournament wraps up on Saturday.
The MCT preliminaries saw No. 15 Hun and No. 16 Steinert advance to the first round. The Spartans (3-12) face top-seeded Lawrenceville (6-2), while Raiders (1-10) travel down the road to No. 2 Lawrence (12-2-1) in a first round game.
Before we get into the tournament, let’s give some due to Allentown and Lawrence as they have the Colonial and Valley Division titles locked up based on the 3/2 point system.
Three points for a divisional win and two for an intradivisional win.
Allentown (10-1) has won seven straight and the last five have come via the shutout route. Grace Leard has an 0.91 goals against average in the cage and the defense in front of her has been exceptional.
The Redbirds are the 3-seed in the MCT and could be on a collision course with Lawrence in the county semifinals.
Wouldn’t that be interesting, a mythical Colonial Valley Conference championship game.
Besides a great defense, the Redbirds have been led by Kerri McCarthy with 17 goals, Morgan Vaccaro, one of the senior leaders, has four goals and eight assists and Gabi Leach has been amazing lately with five goals and two assists in the last three games.
“I’m so proud of this team,” said co-coach Mary Ellen McCarthy. “Morgan Vaccaro has been solid in the middle and it was the Princeton game last year we moved Kerri (McCarthy) to the front and it has paid off.”
Lawrence is coming off a 1-1 tie with Princeton on Tuesday and has a big Valley Division game at Robbinsville on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.
The Cardinals have the state’s leading scorer in Talia Schenck with 45 goals and she now has 84 in her career, which has not yet completed a full two years.
Schenck has had nine games this season where she scored three or more goals.
A big help to the Cardinals attack has been the play of Ola Kwasniwski with 13 assists and Haley Adamczak has nine goals.
Lawrence is on a streak of 10 games without a loss and will be looking toward a great run in the MCT.
Thursday will be the prelude to the weekend’s MCT games and there are several key ones.
We mentioned Lawrence heading to Robbinsville (94). The Ravens have been playing well.
Other games have Notre Dame (8-4), which has lost three of the last five, heading to Princeton (10-2-1).
West Windsor-Plainsboro North (5-6) heads to Hightstown (6-7). The Rams have fallen in two of the last three.
A very improved Hamilton (4-9) team entertains an equally improved WW-P South (4-6-1). Both have had impressive showings and this is a good test for them.
MCT Schedule
No. 15 Hun at No. 2 Lawrence 4 p.m.
No. 14 Hamilton at No. 3 Allentown 4 p.m. No. 9 Pennington at No. 8 Robbinsville 4 p.m. No. 16 Steinert at No. 1 Lawrenceville 4:15 p.m. No.11 WW-P South at No. 6 Princeton Day 4:15 p.m.
Saturday
No. 13 Hightstown at No.4 Princeton 11 a.m. No. 10 WW-P North at No. 7 Stuart 11 a.m. No. 12 Hopewell Valley at No. 5 Notre Dame 12 p.m.
Contact Joe O’Gorman at jogorman@trentonian.com and follow him on Twitter @j_ogorman819