GRANBY – Kiko Bhowmik was the offensive catalyst for the Amherst girls lacrosse team, as the junior attacker scored five goals and added an assist to finish as Amherst’s top point producer in a 14-11 victory over Granby on a cold and raw afternoon Friday.

Claire Kennedy and Ava Carey each netted hat tricks as well as the ‘Canes improved to 2-2 in the win over the Rams.

“Claire Kennedy, I think she had one of her best games in a long time, dishing the ball,” Amherst head coach Andrew MacDougall said. “We got some contributions from some players who we hadn’t really gotten much from in the past. Sydney [Holmes] is a new player, she had an assist, which was great, [Evangeline Donta] had an assist, which was great.

“Kiko is always… she kind of leads and just does a great job trying to set things up,” MacDougall added. “Lots of people going strong to goal [so] definitely happy with how everybody did.”

Granby’s Kalli White led all players in goals (seven) and points (eight), but it wasn’t enough as the hosts fell to 1-2 on the season with the defeat.

“I just think we made a lot of young-team mistakes,” Rams head coach Gary O’Grady said. “It was our first game since March 31, we had three game canceled because of the weather and we just weren’t as sharp as we needed to be.”

Amherst led for a majority of the game, taking an 8-4 advantage into halftime, then a 11-7 lead going into the final 12 minutes. However, consecutive yellow cards late in regulation forced the ‘Canes to play two players down with about 3 minutes, 30 seconds showing on the clock and a 14-10 lead.

White scored her seventh goal moments after to cut Granby’s deficit to three goals, with plenty of time left to tack on more. Amherst goalie Eden Polak had other ideas though as the junior stoned the Rams on a couple of free-position opportunities, both coming with less than a minute left in the game, to seal the ‘W’ in the evenly-matched outing.

“We have been working on a lot of our special teams stuff the last week or two, so we were ready to play man-down, we weren’t exactly ready to play two-man down, but I think the girls were just full of energy where they were able to pick up,” MacDougall said. “We did a man [defense] when we should’ve done a zone, we took our chances. Eden in net, really stepped up in the last couple minutes especially. When you have that, it really gives your defense today.”

“The message was to put pressure on the ball, double team, don’t throw the ball away,” O’Grady said regarding the man-advantage situation. “They were a very good team and they knew how to handle the pressure. It seemed like every time we got on a roll, they had an answer for us.”

Mars Leonard (two) and Zoey Candito completed Amherst’s goal-scoring attack. In between the pipes, Polak grabbed nine saves

The Rams’ scoring was rounded out by Ava Loughman, Kelly-Lynne Kennedy and Mylin Laliberte, while goalie Faith Ramos recorded five saves.

“We do have a lot of experienced players,” O’Grady said. “It’s just that our depth, we could use a little more depth, but that just goes with being a small school. I thought it was a game we could have won but some mistakes we made, that’s what killed us.”

Amherst will travel to Pope Francis next and Granby will host Chicopee Comp in its next contest. Both games will happen Monday.