Girls lacrosse: Barrington avenges Hersey loss, wins third straight MSL title

With the realignment of every sport outside of football in the Mid-Suburban League this season, some sports have added tweaks and twists in determining an MSL champion.

Take Lacrosse for example. In both the boys and girls schedules, a divisional playoff was added to the format.

In it, girls divisional winners, Hersey (West) and Rolling Meadows (East) faced off against the runner-up of the opposite loop: Schaumburg (East) and Barrington (West) to earn a berth in Friday's MSL title game.

With that in mind, the winners of those contests, the Huskies and Fillies, got to square off on the lacrosse pitch of Morris Field at the Forest View Educational Center in Arlington Heights Friday night. It was a rematch of their April 13 clash at Hersey that saw them pin Barrington with its only loss of the spring.

Thanks to a strong start from one of its senior leaders, the Fillies took an early and after an early tie never looked back en route to a 15-7 win that not only avenged that loss but earned them a third straight Mid-Suburban crown.

"We came into this having a (winning) mentality and just pushing the pace so that we could get the upper hand," Barrington senior midfielder Emma Menke said.

Menke, a Denison (Ohio) recruit, got Barrington (18-1) on the board first just 10 ticks in with the first of her four-goal, two-assist evening.

After Hersey (14-6) evened the score at 1 on a goal from sophomore midfielder Chelsea Brown, it would be a pair of Fillies midfielders in freshman Gia Klauer (5 goals) and junior Bella Wolfe (3 goals) that kept the visitors ahead to stay with back-to-back scores that opened up a 5-1 lead with 90 seconds left in the opening period.

The Huskies could get no closer than 7-3 on a goal from sophomore middie Brielle Perrault with 8:29 left in the first half before consecutive penalty tallies by Menke and senior attacker Zoey Watson gave the Fillies a 9-3 halftime advantage.

A pair of goals by senior attacker Chloe Niven plus goals 4 and 5 from Klauer expanded the Barrington lead to 15-5 after three quarters as senior netminder Maya Azrate's 9 saves held the Huskies at bay.

Fillies mentor Addie Dieckmeyer talked about her team's resiliency.

"It's a very special group. We have six freshmen," Dieckmeyer said. "We've definitely had lots of good competition this year and we've had some games that have helped us. I think we're really ready to go into sectionals."