Midfield effort helps Plymouth Whitemarsh hold off Haverford

WHITEMARSH >> The ice bags, wrappings and bruises told enough of the story.

Plymouth Whitemarsh’s midfield had a tough day of work Friday afternoon, but it just kept taking the hits and kept on going. Early in the season, the Colonials girls lacrosse team has asked a lot of their midfield in both offensive and defensive capabilities and the unit has so far, done its job.

Things got interesting at the end on Friday, but the midfield’s effort was enough to help PW top visiting Haverford 10-9 in a nonleague game.

“In any sport, when you’re playing well it’s what keeps you going,” PW senior midfielder Kennedy Reardon said. “As midfielders, we’re the first people that get a chance to start it because the draw starts with us. We’re the ones who have a chance to hype everyone up and that’s really important.”

Reardon, a senior and her two sophomore running mates Mac Leszczynski and Natalie Lannie were ever-present in pretty much every aspect of the game. They all ended the game wearing some type of souvenir in the form of a cut, a bruise or just some lingering soreness.

Lannie set the tone on PW’s first goal. The sophomore drove right into the Haverford defense, scored and got clocked in the face by a stick for her efforts, then later in the game, got hit twice on the same hand while trying to seek out more offense.

“We’ve been working on keeping it positive and keeping everyone’s spirits up,” Leszczynski said. “We want to keep a good energy so we can keep playing hard the entire game and not put our heads down.”

Leszczynski led PW with four goals and an assist but said the midfielders were trying to get the Colonials’ low attackers more involved. PW lost a lot of offense from last year’s team, but the attack still has some potent scorers like Lexi Petrakis (three goals) and Raquel Baskin, so the midfield wants to keep feeding them the ball.

Haverford held a sizable advantage in draw controls with Mia Ciancio often coming up with the ball in her stick, but didn’t take advantage of it until the late rally in the second half. Instead, the Fords went down 4-0 as PW goalie Casey Lynch saved the first four Haverford shots and PW’s long possessions usually ended in goals.

At the break, the Fords had a 7-2 edge on draw controls but PW led the game 6-2 after turning six of its seven shots on cage into scores.

“We were mainly looking to work the ball around and hit our low attackers,” Leszczynski said. “We didn’t hit those low attackers as much as we wanted to, but we still worked hard and stayed aggressive in the attack.”

Reardon pointed to PW’s double-teams in the midfield as something that helped counter Haverford’s draw control proficiency. The Colonials forced a handful of turnovers in the midfield, taking possessions away from Haverford and preventing the defense from having to work more than necessary. Lannie had a solid defensive game, collecting five ground balls.

“We have been playing a lot more together as a defense lately,” Leszczynski said. “We struggled with it a bit in our first couple games. Since we’ve changed to a regular floater on defense, we really came together and have been working well with it.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh got a terrific start to the second half and added four goals in the opening 13 minutes to take a 10-4 lead. Petrakis had two of the goals, the second assisted on a thread-the-needle pass by Reardon while Leszczynski had the other two, her first on a tough run through the middle of Haverford’s defense.

Reardon didn’t score, but she notched two assists and kept the midfield’s energy up even as the unit was working hard on both ends.

“They give you 100 percent all the time, no matter what’s going on, they’re running after the ball, they go both ends, communicate well and they’re not afraid to let their teammates do something to help,” PW coach Ellen Reilly said. “They’re good kids and you can see that because they work well together.

“Kennedy is a very positive person and she has Nat and Max who are sophomores, so she knows to keep them in the game and never let them hang their heads. It’s the leadership from her that helps them.”

After Leszczynski notched her fourth goal of the game with 11:59 to go, the Colonials lost some of the thunder that had been pushing them to that point. Haverford took advantage and finally started to make the most of its ability to win the draw controls.

Reilly pointed out her team still had a host of careless turnovers and poor shots, and some of PW’s bad passes helped set up Fords goals in the latter end of the second half. Over the final eight minutes of the game, PW gave up four straight goals that allowed Haverford to get within one.

Momentum was on the Fords’ side but time wasn’t. Sydney Corcoran’s goal to make it 10-9 came with just 2.4 seconds left on the game clock. PW did help itself out with a two-plus minute possession prior to that, bleeding off some valuable clock but not getting a goal out of it.

“Not our finest moment,” Reardon said. “We were going hard, but I thought our fitness sunk a little bit, we were a little too comfortable. We played a lot of defense in the second half and that eventually tires you out.”

PLYMOUTH WHITEMARSH 10, HAVERFORD 9
PLYMOUTH WHITEMARSH 6 4 – 10
HAVERFORD 2 7 – 9
Goals-Assists: PW – Max Leszczynski 4-1, Lexi Petrakis 3-0, Natalie Lannie 1-0, Amanda Fineman 1-0, Raquel Baskin 1-0, Kennedy Reardon 0-2; H – Sydney Corcoran 3-0, Willa Hetznecker 3-0, Paige Corcoran 1-0, Julia Klein 1-0, Mia Ciancio 1-1, Sarah Daly 0-1.