Notre Dame Academy girls lacrosse team grinds out win over Norwell

NORWELL — The Norwell girls lacrosse team did as good a job defensively as you could possibly expect on Tuesday against Notre Dame Academy. But even when the Cougars aren’t lighting up the scoreboard, the reigning Div. 1 champions remain tough to beat.

Led by a hat trick from junior Bela Taylor, NDA grinded out a 5-3 win over the Clippers, controlling possession in the fourth quarter to run its mark to 6-1 on the season.

“Every single time we play Norwell, in any season, in any year, it’s always a battle,” said NDA coach Meredith McInnis. “They are incredibly well-coached, I have the utmost respect for Kara (Connerty) and her program, so this is exactly how I expected it to be.”

The teams will get quite familiar in the coming days as they play two more times in the next two weeks.

The critical stretch came at the end of the first half as the Cougars, who had been held to one goal over the first 24 minutes, scored twice in the final 42.4 seconds. Hannah Evans struck first and Taylor followed 30 seconds later from a free position for a 3-1 lead at the break.

Norwell (7-2) closed the gap to 4-3 through three quarters thanks to a pair of free-position goals off the stick of star Allie Connerty, who had all three Clippers’ scores.

The NDA offense never quite clicked, with Norwell particularly disruptive in forcing turnovers in the first half and goalie Izzy Pithie (seven saves) — headed to the Notre Dame located in South Bend Ind. — making big stops throughout in holding the Cougars to a third of their average of 15 goals per game.

“Credit to their defense for making us uncomfortable and making us not able to find ways to score, and credit to their goalkeeper for keeping the ball out of the net, I thought she did a fabulous job,” said McInnis. “We probably weren’t as aggressive as we should have been but it was what we expected and we prepared for, we just have to find better ways to execute.”

Senior captain Kylie Wilson buried a free-position opportunity for a key insurance goal when the Cougars needed one with 8:02 to play, however, and the Clippers were trapped in their own end most of the rest of the way, unable to mount a fourth-quarter charge.

“We still have tons of work to do, we are not at our potential yet,” said Wilson. “Something that we have been working on since we are such a young team is keeping our composure and we applied that sort of in the fourth quarter but we are definitely still working on it.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2RE2klm