Girls lacrosse: Montini figures it out for itself

Coach Kaitlin Sheridan has exhorted her Montini girls lacrosse team plenty over the past couple of months.

So when St. Francis scored off the opening draw Monday afternoon, Sheridan said absolutely nothing.

Interesting strategy, and it worked. The next five Montini shots were goals, including a pair apiece from junior Johanna Kingsfield and sophomore Shannon Williams, which essentially put this one away early for the Broncos.

"I actually did not tell the girls anything today," Sheridan said. "I told them that I had spoken enough over the last two-and-a-half months, and I was going to let them coach themselves and that they needed to figure things out and learn the game on their own.

"So they did."

Indeed. After St. Francis parlayed junior Sabrina Eichenberger's opening draw into a goal by senior Beth Weizeorick 51 seconds into the contest, the result appeared to be a pretty ticked off Montini squad, which led to the subsequent cavalcade of goals.

"I wouldn't say (we were) mad," said Kingsfield, who ended up scoring 4 and won 9 draws. "It just puts us on edge. We actually have to try. It's going to be a hard game no matter what, no matter who we play, and the next one is ours. We just have to fight for it."

"Our goal is to get the first draw, but when we don't, we just know that we have to work that much harder to do it again, get the draw back, and when we do, we need to settle and do everything that we talk about," Williams added.

About a minute after St. Francis tallied, senior attack Anne Bowe came around the back left of the net and deposited the ball top shelf past Spartans sophomore goalie Elyse Monma.

Exactly a minute later, at 22:04, it was Kingsfield's turn, taking the ball nearly the distance to give the Broncos their first lead, one they would never relinquish.

After Williams' first goal it was Kingsfield again at 18:30, driving down the center and dodging three Spartans before blasting the ball into the top center of the net.

Then it was Williams again, scoring off a St. Francis turnover.

Suddenly, Montini (8-6, 3-0 Girls Catholic Athletic Conference) was up 5-1 and never looked back, though St. Francis scored 3 goals in the final 5:24 of the game, 2 off the stick of senior Chloe Vruno.

That opening-draw goal had Weizeorick thinking it was a harbinger of things to come.

"It was a big momentum boost," she said. "I think it really got us going in the beginning of game and continue on throughout the rest of the game."

Vruno finished with 3 goals, for St. Francis, while Eichenberger added one of her own. Monma had a solid night in goal, with 11 saves, 6 of which came in the second half.

But St. Francis (3-10, 1-2) got outshot 23-14, while Montini went 13-8 on draw controls.

"It turned out that their strength of a couple of key players were a little bit too much for our defense," Spartans coach Natalie Nesbitt said. "I'm proud of our attack players, they stayed in there, they did a nice job scoring on several occasions."