BY MATT STOUT
Her team was minutes away from improving to 3-1. It had erased what was a three-goal deficit at one point. Despite losing, it still stood in good shape four games into the spring.
But when asked about the John Stark girls lacrosse team’s season thus far following a last-minute, 10-9 loss to Kingswood on May 3, senior captain Liz Marshall said it “has been a rough start for us.”
Really?
“Well, just this game I guess I’m reacting to,” she said.
Yet, such are the expectations surrounding the Generals for this season, a year after they completed the most successful campaign in program history and earned their first playoff win. Close won’t cut it anymore, neither will accepting a sub.-500 start.
After finishing 6-9 in 2006, they feature a more diverse offense, a defense built around athleticism and a goalie in Rachel Quimby who is that much more experienced.
Considered a first-year coach, John Warner was also a major contributor to last season’s success, scouting the team from the stands as an assistant and filling in for a week for head coach Lorraine Connell.
Though Stark was nipped again on Monday, May 7, in an 8-7 loss to Laconia – its comeback fell short after erasing an 8-4 deficit – it rebounded with a 11-10 win over Hopkinton on Tuesday, May 8, to pull to 3-3 entering another busy week of Division III match-ups.
The Generals play at Merrimack Valley, then at home against Somersworth before hosting Saint Thomas Aquinas in the span of five days. They have no plans of backing down, even with a more competitive league than in past years, Warner said.
“Now we expect to do better,” said Warner, whose daughter Leigh, the program’s second all-time leading scorer, is one of two seniors gone from last year. “I think everything’s there.”
Heading Stark’s complete squad is a balanced attack that’s moved from relying on one scorer, such as Leigh Warner last year, to several.
After eight different players scored in a 12-11 win over Kearsarge on May 2, seven different people found the net against Kingswood, including Sam Aucoin, who scored three times. Sarah Dixon, Morgan Vogt, Connie Honeycutt, Meg Sawyer, Marshall and Kelsey Wells all scored once.
Quimby made seven saves on Monday to stem a Laconia attack that’s scored 12 or more goals in four of its seven games, and a defense led by senior Nicole Duquette is starting to find the chemistry it had last year.
With upcoming games against some of the league’s top teams, including St. Thomas and Hollis-Brookline, the Generals will need top efforts if they hope to continue to meet their heightened expectations. But that’s not to say they didn’t always think they were capable of reaching them.
“Even though we lost games, we always felt like we could do better, so it wasn’t much of a surprise (last year) because we always knew we had it in us,” Marshall said. “At least to get back there (to the second round), I think definitely (is the goal).”