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Boardman girls notch first lacrosse victory
VIDEO: Poland Boardman Girls Lacrosse
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By DAN HINER
POLAND
The Boardman girls lacrosse team is in the midst of its first season. And just like any first-year program, there’s been a learning curve for head coach Michelle Peters and her team.
The Spartans lost their first three games. But they pulled ahead of Poland in the second half to come away with a 13-8 victory — the first win in program history — on Thursday.
Alexis Phillips, Alisa Earvin and Lindsay O’Nesti helped lead the way for the Spartans offensively.
Earvin and O’Nesti scored Boardman’s first two goals in the opening minutes of the first.
Boardman jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first quarter, but Poland senior Sarah Burkert scored a last-second goal in the second quarter to cut the lead to 7-6 by halftime.
A couple minutes into halftime, Peters pulled the Spartans away from the bench to go over things for the second half. She said the biggest issue was calming the girls down and getting them ready to come out strong in the second half.
“That’s when they started to fall apart,” Peters said. “They started to get nervous because we haven’t won a game yet. So they started to get nervous and started to lose their focus on playing in their zone and they would leave their half open.
“But I called them over and told them to stay on task. We started out strong, let’s end strong.”
Phillips scored three of the team’s final six goals in the second half. Phillips’ three goals tied Alexis Stutz and Earvin for the team high.
Stutz also led the Spartans with two assists. O’Nesti, Earvin, Kate Bodamer, Abigail Serrino and Nicole Enright all recorded an assist.
Peters said O’Nesti, Earvin, Phillips and Bodamer worked well together since the start of the season.
Sydney Phillips led the Bulldogs with four goals. Baileigh Black and Burkert also scored early in the first half, getting Poland back in the game. Burkert was second on the team with two goals.
The Bulldogs were held to two goals in the second half. Peters said the Spartans changed their defense from a man-to-man philosophy. She said the change in scheme was the biggest difference in the second half.
“We tried to switch it up. We’ve been working on zone [defense] the last few days and I think it worked out well,” Peters said. “I think they played very hard. I kind of got nervous in the middle when Poland started scoring, and I told them, ‘Don’t lose focus on what we just practiced. Stay on task.’ I think they did really well and finished out strong.”
Peters said the beginning of the season was new to everyone in the program. Peters was the softball and soccer coach at Boardman, but gave up her position with the softball team to make room for lacrosse.
Peters said she never played lacrosse before and her only experience with the sport was as a spectator.
“This is a learning experience for me too,” Peters said. “This is a new sport — varsity [lacrosse] at Boardman. I’m very excited.”