Girls lacrosse: Kiko Bhowmik, Ava Carey guide Amherst to first win of season

AMHERST — The Amherst girls lacrosse team dominated through the cold for a 19-6 victory over South Hadley at home on Tuesday night.

After two tough losses to begin the year, where the Hurricanes found themselves on the other end of the spectrum, the team came out with a vengeance against the Tigers.

Amherst opened the year with a 15-1 loss to Minnechaug, followed by a 15-8 defeat at the hands of Wahconah last week. On Tuesday, the team relied on its captains to set the tone, with the veterans coming through in a big way.

Ava Carey, Kiko Bhowmik and Keira Cunniffe all impacted the game in different ways for the Hurricanes in the win. Above all the stats they put up, the trio helped keep the team locked in despite the rocky start, coming ready to play out of the gate.

“They’ve really been the leaders spiritually, but they’ve also just been leaders in terms of the gameplay on the field,” Amherst head coach Andrew MacDougall said. “It’s critical, given the fact that the first few games were really tough losses, and it’s an easy position to be in where we just become disbanded, but they helped get people excited, rallied and sort of reset our season for us.”

Carey showed out on attack in Tuesday night’s victory, scoring a hat trick in the first half, adding on two more in the second for five total goals. The senior added three ground balls and two assists on the productive night.

Bhowmik had an even busier first half, taking eight shots and finding the back of the net with four of them. She added three ground balls of her own, along with an assist in each half.

Cunniffe held things down on the defensive end, locking down the back half and doing well to keep attackers away from the net throughout the contest.

“I’m very happy with how we played,” MacDougall said. “We’ve been trying to really get some of the errors and mistakes out of the game and just make smarter decisions with the ball. I feel like we did that. I feel like we also got a lot of people involved on offense, and the defense played exceptionally well.”

South Hadley struggled to find consistent offense against the Hurricanes’ defensive game plan, with Ella Haber leading the team’s limited offensive attack.

Haber’s two goals in the first half helped to keep things close at the time, with Amherst’s success on both ends proving to be too difficult to surmount.

Eden Polak made 10 saves in net for the Hurricanes in the win, helping cap off a solid day of goal prevention from the team.

“I think that the style of defense we used helped to really take out some of [the Tigers’] threats,” MacDougall said. “The communication was excellent, and then we had some players step up. One of our starters got injured, and we filled the void really well, and sometimes that adds a little spark plug as well.”

The tough loss makes it three defeats in a row for South Hadley, now sitting at 1-3 on the year. It’ll look to get back on the right track on Thursday, April 9, at 4 p.m. on the road against Pope Francis.

With the win, Amherst gets its first win of the season, improving to 1-2 so far. The Hurricanes will be back in action on Thursday, April 9, at 4:30 p.m. against Mount Greylock on the road.

“I want the team to internalize what this feels like, what they did,” MacDougall said. “I want them to remember what they did and be able to pull upon that moving forward.”