AMHERST – Tuesday’s girls’ lacrosse game game between Hampshire Regional and Amherst saw two teams in different places.
For Amherst, everything went right – passes were connecting, its defense kept the Raiders out of the offensive zone, and the shots that did get through were stopped by ‘Canes goalie Cedar Conrad. Their offense was firing on all cylinders, led primarily by Francesca Sloan with eight points (6G, 2A).
At the other end, things just weren’t going right for the Raiders. Despite their ability to keep up with Amherst around the field, their passes weren’t connecting and their shots weren’t falling.
In the end, the home team prevailed with Amherst picking up a 15-1 win. The Hurricanes led 10-0 at halftime and kept the impressive play rolling in the second half.
“I feel like today was really an improvement from the rest of our games and I think we played together as a team really well,” Sloan said. “I think people’s main priorities was getting others goals, and that was really nice to see.”
Abi Como got the scoring started for Amherst with the first two goals, and she finished the game with a hat trick. After Como’s pair of goals, Sloan got rolling, netting six of the team’s next seven goals while Mars Leonard added one, as well. Talia Sadiq got on the board in the final minute, netting her first goal of the night with 21 seconds left.
Kiko Bhowmik and Sloan netted two more goals to start the second half before Hampshire got on the board. Mary Thibault scored the Raiders’ lone goal on a free position attempt seven and a half minutes into the second frame.
Sadiq got her second goal of the evening shortly after Thibault, and though her teammates tried to dish her the ball later, it was Sloan who scored the final two goals of the night.
The Hurricanes have been spending time focusing on specific offensive plays and defensive structure, and their hard work showed in Tuesday’s games. Amherst looked poised and in control for much of the contest, winning ground balls and cutting through the middle of the field to create scoring opportunities.
“We’ve been really trying to work on having a more disciplined offense, trying to get working out of formations, working the ball around as opposed to people just taking it in randomly. So that was a big point of emphasis,” Amherst head coach Andrew MacDougall said. “And then we’ve also just been working on some defensive discipline, too, making sure that we’re understanding the player we’re marking up against, what their tendencies are, things like that.”
As strong as the Hurricanes defense was, the defender of the game was Hampshire’s Silvia Bastek, who was tasked with face-guarding one of Amherst’s top offensive threats in Sadiq. She entered the game just three goals away from her 100th career point, but Bastek’s stingy defense held her to just two markers. She’ll aim to hit the milestone in the team’s next game against Springfield Central on Thursday.
“I was like, all right, maybe if we can take that quick pass to the middle away, we might be able to keep up a little better,” Hampshire head coach Grace Ahrensdorf said. “But Amherst clearly has a lot of solid girls on offense. So it didn’t work in that regard, but Silvia did a really good job of staying with her.”
Hampshire has had an up and down season so far, picking up a couple of wins but not finding much consistency. The club lost some important seniors last year, including Skylar Duda, who hit the 100 point milestone, and are still trying to find chemistry this season.
“We’ve had a couple of games kind of like this where we’re just not quite meshing the way that we are hoping and what we’re seeing in practice isn’t quite what we’re showing in games yet,” Ahrensdorf said.
We’ve had a couple pretty good games and I think we’re ready to move in the right direction, but we’re still working on filling some different spots of players we lost last year.”
Hannah Bevis can be reached at hbevis@gazettenet.com. Follow her on Twitter @Hannah_Bevis1.