SOUTH HADLEY — Needing only two points to eclipse 100 for her career coming into Thursday’s contest against Belchertown, South Hadley girls lacrosse senior Ava Asselin wasted no time hitting the century mark. Asselin scored two of the game’s first three goals, the latter coming on a free-position shot where she beat Orioles goalie Riley Nestor low, to accomplish the feat.

Not only did Asselin’s dominant start write her name in the South Hadley record book, it also ignited the Tigers’ best performance of the season. South Hadley gave up a season-low in goals on defense while putting up a season-high in goals on offense as it defended home turf in a 17-4 win over Belchertown.

The victory stood as South Hadley’s first of 2025.

“My friends Margo [Watkins] and Raquel [Losty] got 100 points last year, and I just think it’s a really nice accomplishment to have,” Asselin said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them… It definitely feels amazing to do this and get the win. I missed the feeling of winning, so hopefully there is more to come.”

Asselin finished with a hat trick and added two assists in a five-point effort to lead the way for South Hadley. Losty, Watkins and Caitlin Dean scored four goals apiece in a strong offensive showing, and Kelcey Zraunig and Simone Quinn each added a goal to round out the Tigers’ scoring.

While it’s easy to give the offense love in a game where it put up 17 goals, South Hadley head coach Danielle Clark first mentioned her defense after the game. The Tigers started four freshmen on their back line Thursday, as they have done for the majority of this spring after graduating a good chunk of seniors from their 2024 Western Mass. championship team.

Those four freshmen – Willa Camp, Kylie Sierra, Nora Vaughn and Lea Agudelo – let up three goals in the first quarter. But from that point on, they were lights out. Belchertown only scored one goal across the next three frames as South Hadley built its lead.

“It was great to see them play so well today,” Clark said of her back line. “We’ve been working really hard in practice on our communication defensively, our sliding and making contact with our opponents, and I think it really came together today. Seeing those defenders step up and show that they can do it hopefully gives them confidence moving forward.”

With four players scoring at least three goals, it made South Hadley’s offense extremely difficult to defend. The Tigers continuously made timely cuts across the middle as they swung the ball around the outside of Belchertown’s defense, and those cuts led to several goals.

Whether it was Asselin, Losty, Watkins or Dean, South Hadley had its way in the attacking zone.

“It feels good to see them put balls in the net, because the past few games we haven’t had a lot,” Clark said. “We’ve been working a lot on hard passes, cutting hard at the [8-yard mark], stick skills and the fundamentals altogether. It’s been tough, but today we executed our offense really well.”

Lia Pikul and Aubrey McCain were the goal scorers for Belchertown, both scoring twice to make up the Orioles’ four tallies. It’s been a bit of a work-in-progress for head coach Jarrod Lemke and Belchertown, which has only two seniors on the team this spring. The Orioles have now lost all three of their games by at least nine goals, but that doesn’t concern Lemke.

He’s seen improvement from game to game, including Thursday as Belchertown’s transition game came to life – something he’s been waiting for through the first couple of weeks. It also hasn’t helped that the Orioles’ first handful of games came against some of the best teams they’re going to see all year long. There hasn’t been much time to get their feet under them.

“Obviously we’ve lost by a considerable margin every game, but at least we know what we need to do better,” Lemke said. “On Monday we watched film for an hour and a half and saw everything we’ve been doing wrong. If there was nothing we could fix and we were still getting blown out, that’s a little bit of a different story. We know what we need to fix. Today, there was stuff that we did better. We’re getting there.”

Lemke has put in a handful of plays for his team to try during games, and he even saw one play out to perfection and lead to one of Belchertown’s goals. That made it clear to him his team has made strides since game No. 1.

“Offensively, I’ve been trying to run a couple of plays, and one of them actually worked today, so that was a bright spot,” he said. “We have to tighten up a little bit on defense. There was good and bad on offense and defense.”

Belchertown (0-3) travels to Amherst on Tuesday in search of its first victory of the year, while South Hadley (1-3) heads to Northampton on the same day for a night bout with the Blue Devils.