Learning Experience for Hoosac Girls Lacrosse Against Mounties

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- There are going to be tougher days for the Mount Greylock girls lacrosse team and better days for the girls from Hoosac Valley.

 

The hope for the Hurricanes is that one of those days is the same day a little later this spring.

 

"I'd like to see where we are when we play them next," Hoosac coach Molly Meczywor said after the Mounties took a 14-1 win on Wednesday at John T. Allen Field.

 

"How have we improved? Where have we been? This was only our second day out. ... Yesterday at practice we knew that we were going to be young. Five of our veterans were sick.

 

"Some of the young kids were nervous. They said, 'What if I screw up?' It's high school sports. If you screw up, you screw up. Let's just go play and get better."

 

And the Hurricanes (0-1) did just that in the second half on Tuesday. After going to intermission down 11-0 -- and even taking into account the fact that the Mounties took the foot off the gas -- Hoosac Valley played a much more organized game down the stretch.

 

It scored its only goal midway through the second off the cross of Michaela LaPlante, who picked up a ground ball inside the fan and fired a shot into the cage.

 

For Mount Greylock (2-0), Sarah Stripp led the way with four goals, and Lucy Barrett had a hat trick.

 

For the second straight game, lots of Mounties earned a spot in the box score. This time, eight players had at least one goal,

and Rachel Clement added an assist on Barrett's tally that made it 6-0 in the sixth minute.

 

Kelsey Orpin had two goals and an assist, and Emily Sabin had a goal and an assist for the Mounties.

 

The first-half margin could have been even greater if not for the play of eighth-grader Keanna Smith, who played her first game ever at goalkeeper in place of one of the ailing Hurricanes, senior keeper Kelsey Holsey.

 

"Kudos to Keanna Smith," Meczywor said. "She came in and got ... bombarded. She did well, and honestly she showed a lot of initiative just saying yesterday that she would go in there."

 

Smith is one of six eighth-graders on a roster dominated by underclassmen for the Hurricanes, a cooperative team of Hoosac Valley and Drury.

 

"We're young, and we're going to have a lot of bumps in the road," Meczywor said. "And it's going to be kind of a growing year.

 

"I thought we demonstrated a lot of improvement from the first to the second half. Our defense was much better. We started to communicate better."

 

Mount Greylock hosts Wahconah on Friday afternoon. Hoosac travels to Wahconah on Monday.