Bonny Eagle 16
South Portland 5
Tight defense and an offensive explosion led the Bonny Eagle girls’ lacrosse team to a 16-5 win over South Portland Saturday. Kate Boyer paced the Scots with four goals. Becky King and Amy Richardson each added three goals. Annie King and Erin Stilphen each had a pair of goals for the Riots.
The game was scoreless for nearly 10 minutes as the two teams probed their opponent for weaknesses. At the 15:05 mark of the first half, Boyer broke the stalemate with a low shot that beat South Portland goalie Amber Cresswell for a 1-0 lead.
The lead stayed 1-0 for a time before the Scots got their offense rolling. Becky King and Kiki Kilbride-Johnson scored back-to-back goals in just 42 seconds and suddenly the Scots were up 3-0.
Toward the end of the first half, Bonny Eagle unleashed another offensive flurry. This time, they scored four goals in just over one minute. Boyer bounced a shot past Creswell for her second goal. Becky King than scored her second. Alyssa Severance got in on the act with a jumping shot with 5:17 left in the half. Boyer then finished off the hat trick with a goal 17 seconds later. That gave Bonny Eagle a 7-0 lead.
The Riots were unable to penetrate the Bonny Eagle defense and get any good looks at the net.
“Our defense is very strong,” said Bonny Eagle coach Judy Martin. “We are just not letting people in. Their cuts were weak and we were able to keep them out. My low defense is just not letting anybody in. We had a lot of double teams which were strong today.”
Richardson scored her first goal with 3:05 to go in the half before the Riots broke through with 28.5 seconds left. Annie King made it 8-1 with South Portland’s first goal. Martin credited the passing and transition game for the big lead.
“A couple of times when they cradled up, I said ‘you don’t need to do that we need to work on our transitions.’ They have done well with it all year so the transitions are a big part of the game,” Martin said. “The movement of the ball and off-ball movement was big. We’ve been working on that all year and its finally clicking and we’re putting it together.”
The Scots continued to pull away in the second half. Severance scored her first goal of the game early in the half. Stephanie Lombardo scored just over a minute later.
The Red Riots managed to get two straight goals in the space of about a minute. Samantha Viola and Annie King scored. Viola’s shot was deflected and just rolled over the line. King’s was a hard shot down low. The two goals cut Bonny Eagle’s lead to 10-3.
But the Scots ripped off five straight goals to put the game away. Jordyn Noyes, Richardson, Lombardo, Becky King and Boyer all scored in that stretch for the Scots.
South Portland fell to 1-5 with the loss while the Scots improved to 3-4 with the win.
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