SANFORD — Wells had a bad start to its game against Sanford on Friday, just like the Warriors had a rough start to their season. Now head coach Jackie Proulx is hoping that the team can finish its season the way it finished off the Spartans.
Wells scored six unanswered goals in the second half to turn an even game into a 12-7 win in an inter-class girls lacrosse matchup at Cobb Stadium. Rain started to fall as soon as the opening whistle blew, forcing players from both teams to adjust to changing conditions on the fly.
The Warriors missed on their first shot attempt 20 seconds in after winning the controlling the opening draw, and Sanford’s Maddy Leigh hit the post on the Spartans’ first shot off a free-position chance 3:40 in.
Leigh then opened the scoring three minutes later, as she made a defender miss at the top of the 12-meter arc and fired a shot past Wells goalie Izzy Smith.
Smith kept it a one-goal game as she turned away a handful of Spartan shots while the Wells defense struggled to clear the ball out of its defensive zone.
“Izzy did great today,” Proulx said of Smith, who isn’t the Warriors’ normal goalie. “This was a big day for her. She stepped up huge.”
The Warriors evened the game up just under 12 minutes in, as Holly Robinson found Megan McDonald open in front of the net from behind.
The two teams traded goals just over a minute apart three minutes later, as Courtney Dumont put Sanford back ahead before Nicole Moody evened it up for Wells.
The Warriors took their first lead 34 seconds later, as Amanda Deshaies fired a shot through traffic and past Sanford goalie Kayla Burgess after Wells won the draw.
That lead was short-lived, as Dumont drove in from behind the net, backed down a defender, and beat Smith with a close-range shot 36 seconds later.
Robinson and Sanford’s Emily Salls traded goals with three minutes to play before Jasmine Loukola scored for Wells to give the Warriors a 5-4 halftime lead.
“I think ending the first half strongly got us ready for the second half. And I think we woke up,” said Proulx. “We were just slow and on our heels, and then we got our confidence, and we got our momentum, and really took over in that second half.”
McDonald scored just 30 seconds into the second half on a pass from Betsy Andrews, and it looked like the Warriors had gained momentum for the first time in the game for either team. But Salls and Dumont scored 42 seconds apart five minutes later to tie the game at 6-6.
Sanford also failed to gain momentum from its mini comeback. But six minutes later, the Warriors found their mojo. Hailey Smith scored two goals in a 29-second span at the halfway point of the half, and Wells didn’t look back from there.
“They were hurrying their passes. At the beginning, we were taking a good three, four, five minutes on offense to get a good shot off, and it was working for us,” said Sanford head coach Diana Walker. “But then we started to really hurry, and it was to their advantage, because they had more speed than we did.
“They had some fast girls, and they went by us. They had some wheels.”
The Warriors scored four goals in less than four minutes (two from Loukola, and one each from Deshaies and Andrews) heading into the final five minutes to pull away at 12-6.
“I think we just had to get the ball moving down our end a little bit,” said Proulx. “I was glad that we got the ball moving down there, and got everyone involved. And once we’re all involved, that’s when things really go our way.”
The Warriors played keep away from there on out, but Sanford was able to show some moxie but stealing the ball away and getting a goal by Leigh with 25 seconds to play.
“We were in that game,” said Walker. “We let it go; we let it get away from us.”
The victory is the second in three games for the Warriors after a 1-3 start. And now into the second half of the season, Proulx said she hopes the season can end better than it started.
“We needed a win today,” said Proulx. “We need a lot of wins moving forward, but I think is a good confidence-booster for us moving into the second half of our season.”
— Staff Writer Wil Kramlich can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 323 or sports@journaltribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @WilTalkSports.
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