Indians’ laXers frustrate Pennridge

May 04, 2010

By: Jon Cooper

By Andrew Marcus
Sportswriter

PERKASIE – Both the Pennridge and Souderton girls’ lacrosse teams have played enough games at this point to know what they need to do to come away with a win. Entering Tuesday at 2-2 and tied for third place in the league, the Indians implemented the tactics and rocked the Rams, 17-6.

It has been no secret that in the three games the Indians lost this year, they were unable to come back from a slow start. In the first five minutes, the Indians scored six goals and were well on their way to improving their record to 8-3 overall on the season. Liz Mower and Danielle Notvest led the offensive attack.

“All three games we lost we did not come out strong,” Notvest said. “We knew we were tied in the league with Pennridge and we picked our game up.”

The Indians were leading 7-0 before the Rams’ Emily Maher tallied the first goal of the night. The senior captain scored three of the Rams’ six goals. Julia Coylar had two goals and Jess Roy had one goal and an assist.

Any other day Roy’s goal would have been nothing to celebrate as it still had the Rams down by a wide margin. But the senior captain’s one quick juke and a strong flick of the wrist put her in the Pennridge record books. Roy’s goal was the 100th of her career and she should have plenty more with six games plus playoffs remaining before she is off to Northwestern. Roy reached the milestone in three years, as she played on junior varsity during her freshmen year.

“Jess is one to always show up for the team,” Rams’ coach Liz Wallace said. “We have a couple of players with the same ability that do not score as many goals. Emily Maher does a little bit of everything, Jen Moyer plays great defense, and Jess makes it a point to put balls in the net. It is a shame it had to come in the middle of that mess.”

The Rams have a lot of talent, but it’s hard to run set plays when they are trying to score six goals with one shot. The Indians’ defense played opportunistic, won the majority of ground balls, and the Rams were unable to erase the slow start.

“At 5-0 you really have to push it, let alone seven goals,” Wallace said. “It was 5-5 in the second half, so if we played like that the entire game, it could have been completely different.”

The Indians are not the team to give a lead to because their defense knows how to seal the deal. The Indians isolated the ball cradler and quickly came over to double team, which forced numerous Rams’ turnovers. The Indians recorded 42 double teams.

“We emphasized the double team and we had 42 today,” Indians’ coach Nicole Bauer said. “The defense was strong. We came out with high intensity. We have a lot of potential when we come out and play well from beginning.”

The Indians are right behind Hatboro-Horsham and North Penn in the standings and a scary team to face down the stretch. The Indians know they need to avoid the slow start, allow their defense to execute the finer points, and they are sure to be in the contention for a league title at the end of the season.

“It’s all about communication,” Notvest said. “You need to know when they are coming over to double team. We’re guarding and blocking more than we are checking and it is working. If we bring it every single minute, like we did tonight, we will be all right.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 6:58 PM and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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