Northwest Catholic Outpaces Granby Memorial Girls Lax in Class S Final

First it was girls soccer, now it’s girls lacrosse.

In the fall, the Northwest Catholic (West Hartford) girls soccer team defeated 4-0 in the state Class M championship game.

Fast forward to June, and many of those Indians on the girls soccer team helped power the No. 5 Northwest Catholic girls lacrosse team in the state Class S finals against No. 2 Granby Memorial High, as the Indians defeated the Bears 12-10 at Bunnell High in Stratford on Saturday afternoon.

“We played our best lacrosse at the end of the season,” Northwest Catholic head coach William Mullady said of his team that had six different players score. “I told them, it doesn’t matter who scores. Anybody here can go to goal. That’s the situation.”

Indeed, Meghan Grabowski had four goals and an assist, Catherine Higgins had three goals, Emily Kearney had two goals, Annie Higgins had a goal and an assist and Lauren Cenci and Grace Hallinan each scored once for Northwest Catholic (14-4-1).

It did not come easily.

With the game tied 4-4 at halftime, Northwest Catholic roared out to start the second half with four consecutive goals to take an 8-4 advantage with 16 minutes left in regulation.

“It was key to get that four-goal lead, but it disappeared awful quickly there,” Mullady said. “We had a yellow card going into the half, so I told them, ‘Girls, if they score, it’s no big deal. We’ll just bounce back.’ So we said, let’s just play our game.’”

Still, Granby Memorial (14-5) fought back, scoring five out of the next six goals: one from Kelsey Iwanicki, two from Cailene Gunn and two from Mia Olsen to make it 9-9 with 9:31 left.

But Northwest’s Grabowski answered to put the Indians up 10-9 with 8:09 remaining, but 13 answered again to tied the game at 10 just 20 seconds later.

Kierney put Northwest up for good at the 5:21 mark and Granbowski salted the game away 30 seconds later to put the Indians up 12-10.
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With the victory, Northwest not only won its first title in girls lacrosse, it also avenged a regular season loss to Granby Memorial suffered on April 28.

“We’re much more composed,” Mullady said. “The last nine games of the season, we started to get our composure. It’s a totally different team.”
Granby Memorial head coach Terri Ziemnicki, for her part, said that she was proud of her team, which avenged last year’s title game loss to Weston with a 9-4 victory in the semifinals.

“In time they’ll be able to see the good things they had accomplished,” Ziemnicki said. “It was a two-goal game, but we had shots that could have gone in. … I think at times we got a little anxious and we needed to take a little bit of extra time to set up.

“I’m really proud of the girls. We ran out of time.”

Notes: The Bears showed their class, quality and character after the loss by showing up at the state Class M softball game at DeLuca Field, where Granby Memorial High played Rocky Hill.