Souderton’s McGowan scores 200th goal but Plymouth Whitemarsh claims win

FRANCONIA >> Souderton girls lacrosse’s Riley McGowan had 199 goals coming into Wednesday afternoon’s contest with Plymouth Whitemarsh. But scoring her next one gave the Temple commit a little bit of stress.

“I was kind of nervous,” she said. “Like all the hype up and nothing was going to happen.”

McGowan, however, made sure her 200th career goal happened in the first half, intercepting a clearance attempt and charging in for the Indians’ first tally of the Suburban One League American Conference contest.

“It means a lot,” said McGowan of reaching the milestone. “I didn’t think I was going to hit 100 last year and then I hit 200. Took a lot of hard work, lot of work in the offseason and team stood behind and everyone worked together and it was a team effort.”

McGowan upped her career total to 203 goals by the end of the matchup, pacing Souderton with four goals, but it was the visiting Colonials that came away with the victory. Plymouth Whitemarsh controlled the draw circle and possession, jumped out to a 5-1 lead and held off Souderton to claim a 13-8 win.

“Possession of draw benefitted us today,” PW coach Ellen Reilly said. “Max (Leszczynski) has been doing well our past couple games on the draw. And that is lacrosse. You get possession, you be smart with the ball, you get the lead. And possession is what the game’s all about.”

Leszczynski was big on the draw and just as big on offense for the Colonials (3-7, 1-3 conference), scoring a game-high five goals and also dishing out a pair of assists as PW’s 13 goals were a seeason-high as it snapped a five-game losing streak.

“We have been just constantly working hard and some of our games we’ve been really close and at the end it really hasn’t paid off,” Leszczynski said. “But I feel like today we kept a good distance and we all worked really hard for this win. We really kept our energy up.”

Lexi Petrakis finished with four goals while Kennedy Reardon added two goals for Plymouth Whitemarsh, which took advantage of free-position shots, scoring eight times on eight-meter opportunities — five in the first half.

“It’s huge,” Leszczynski said. “When we convert all of our eight-meters — well not all of our eight-meters, when we convert most of our eight meters it shows the difference between games,”

Randi Hess had two goals and an assist for Souderton (7-6, 3-3), which had its four-game winning streak snapped.

“Plymouth Whitemarsh is a very good team, always is, always very competitive and we had a lot of trouble with possession on the draw,” Souderton coach Nancy Offner said. “Their girl on the draw was excellent.”

PW never trailed in the contest, getting out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Petrakis and Leszczynski before McGowan forced a turnover and used it to collect her 200th goal, making it 2-1 at 14:43 in the first half.

“The game didn’t go the way we would like it to go especially in front of a home crowd with something fun like that but it’s worth celebrating,” said Offner of McGowan reaching 200. “It’s really quite an accomplishment for a lacrosse player. And she works very hard at her stick work and her shooting and she deserves it.”

For McGowan, with how her career at Souderton began four years ago it was hard for her to imagine ever reaching the 200-goal plateau.

“My freshman year, I struggled with confidence a lot,” she said. “I only, I think, put up 11 or 12 goals so it was a big step to go from there to 200. I never thought it would happen.”

The senior, however, worked to make herself into one of the program’s most prodigious goal scorers, a two-time SOL American Conference firs-team selection and soon a Division I athlete.

“Once I got my speed up it was a lot easier,” she said. “And I felt better with the ball and just working with my club coaches and everyone around me just kind of built up my confidence up as I matured.”

After McGowan pulled Big Red within a goal the Colonials responded with a 3-0 run — the first two coming from Leszczynski before Raquel Baskin scored off a Lilly Hanlon assist at 9:49 to push PW’s lead to 5-1.

“The other thing I’m really proud of and this is a team thing, we had girls not committed or dedicated to the team over break, we missed a lot of players, kids went away,” Reilly said. “So today’s game was the 12 girls that were here and did what they needed to do. And they weren’t all varsity starters. So for them to count with a win and come together and do that, I think says something about them.”

The Indians cut the margin to two twice before halftime, the first after back-to-back goals from Kylie Norbeck and Sydney Rohrbach made it 5-3 then when McGowan scored her second at 1:28 to get Big Red within 6-4. But the Colonials collected a pair of goals off free-position shots in the final minute — Petrakis at 48.1 seconds then Reardon with just 4.3 seconds left — to go into the break up 8-4.

“I think we got in our heads and we weren’t talking a lot like we usually do,” McGowan said. “We got in that hole and it’s hard to dig ourselves out of it.”

McGowan collected the opening tally of the second half at 23:47 only for PW to answer with three straight goals, the first two from Leszczynski then a Reardon strike on a free-position shot for PW’s biggest lead at 11-5 with 9:30 remaining.

Souderton made a late push to slice its deficit to three. McGowan scored off a Hess assist at 9:30 then eight seconds later Hess found the back of the net. Hess drove through the defense for another goal at 6:15 to make it 11-8 but the Colonials were content with working the clock and added two more goals to pull away for the win.

Plymouth Whitemarsh 13, Souderton 8
Plymouth Whitemarsh 8 5 — 13
Souderton 4 4 — 8
Plymouth Whitemarsh Goals-Assists: Max Leszczynski 5-2; Lexi Petrakis 4-0; Kennedy Reardon 3-0; Raquel Baskin 1-0; Lilly Hanlon 0-1.
Souderton Goals-Assists: Riley McGowan 4-0; Randi Hess 2-1; Kylie Norbeck 1-0; Sydney Rohrbach 1-0; Lauren Kenah 0-1.