Sports
Girls Lacrosse Downs Smithtown East 20-11
West Islip's girls lacrosse team got off to a slow start but turned up the pressure in the second half for a 20-11 win over East.
Coming off a big 16-9 victory over Bay Shore on Thursday night, the West Islip girls lacrosse team faced off against Smithtown East Monday afternoon. Though they got off to a slow start, the Lions roared back midway through the first half en route to a 20-11 win over the Bulls.
“I thought we started off slow, we were sloppy, missing the ball,” Lions head coach Joe Nicolosi said. “They beat us on ground balls big time.”
Nearly eight minutes into the game the score was tied at three before Loren Ziegler unleashed three unanswered goals in a 49 second span to give the Lions a 6-3 lead. But Smithtown East did not back down and answered with two goals of their own. Nicolosi said after the game he thought that his girls expected East to back down.
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“The girls came out soft but we finished tough,” he said. “Maybe they thought, ‘oh this is a beatable team and if we play our game we’ll definitely beat them.’”
The Lions led 11-6 at halftime but the Bulls came out in the second half and put the first goal on the board nearly four minutes in. It was at this point that West Islip finally stepped up its game.
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“In the second half we came out and said, ‘hey, we need to take control of this game,’” Nicolosi said.” We did it on the draws and we got the ground balls. We still looked sloppy but I think overall we just out ran them.”
West Islip scored the next five goals to open up a 16-7 lead from which they never looked back.
“We came out sloppy and underestimated Smithtown and played down to their level a little bit,” assistant coach Tom Powers said. “In the second half we kind of got into them and they picked it up a little bit.”
Zeigler finished with five goals and four assists and Erin Byrnes contributed four goals. Powers said he thought Zeigler had a “good game,” but didn’t “think anyone had a great game,” he said. “I think we all played pretty average.” Zeigler now leads the team with 22 goals on the season.
The win pushed the Lions record to 5-1 overall and 4-1 in league play I play and dropped Smithtown East to 1-3 overall and in league play. The Lions travel to Centereach to take on Middle Country in their next contest Thursday afternoon. Face off is scheduled for 4:00pm.
