Newtown Girls Lacrosse Capture Sixth SWC Title With 20-4 Win

As the final seconds ticked away in the South-West Conference tournament championship Friday, there wasn't much left for the Newtown High School girls lacrosse team to accomplish.

In fact, the only question that remained was how Newtown would celebrate.

Moments after the clock hit zero, the Nighthawks swarmed goalie Celeste Cheung for their latest championship embrace. It was a celebration dating to 2005 -- when Newtown began its streak of consecutive SWC titles -- but one that remained meaningful.

Top-seed Newtown won its sixth-consecutive SWC crown, as it defeated New Fairfield 20-4 at Brookfield High School.

"It's a different experience every time. We always know we have to go into it like we would play any other game. We knew today was going to take a lot of teamwork and we really played like a team," midfielder Kaitlyn Brophy said. "We really worked hard to get it."

Brophy scored four of her game-high six goals over a 1:49 stretch in the first half and was named the game's Most Valuable Player.

After defeating Joel Barlow for the conference title in 2005 and then conquering Brookfield over the next four seasons, this year's championship outcome was decided early.

Seven different Nighthawks scored goals in the first 22 minutes as Newtown stormed into halftime with a commanding 14-3 lead.

"It's really amazing that we've been able to win six," senior attack Lisa Vendel said. "Every team changes every year. We get new players, we lose our good players but it's still really good that we can come back and win it again."

Vendel, who has been a lynchpin in Newtown's 18-1 (15-0 SWC) season, scored three goals to increase her team-leading total to 71.

Newtown's Katie Canavan tallied the game's first goal just 11 seconds after the opening face-off but sixth-seeded New Fairfield (12-7, 7-5) knotted the game less than a minute later. The Nighthawks, however, closed the door quickly on the Rebels' hopes, as they scored 11 unanswered goals.

"It's great, it's unbelivable," Newtown coach Maura Fletcher said of the title. "The seniors that are there, they have no idea what it's like to lose this. It's pretty great to keep it going that way."

Attack Meghan Bridges scored three goals and recorded a team-high seven assists, while Emma Brown added two goals.

New Fairfield didn't respond to Newtown's early scoring surge until 8:16 remaining in the first half, when Tara Donovan fired a shot past Cheung. Morgan LaBarbera followed with a goal to trim Newtown's lead to 12-3.

The win didn't become official until the final horn sounded, but the reality of winning six consecutive SWC titles began to sink in well before that for Fletcher.

After midfielder Emma Kinglsey, Brophy and Vendel scored less than three minutes into the second half, Fletcher said she "knew it was over by then."

The Nighthawks reeled off six consecutive goals to begin half, as Brophy and Kaley Kruger scored two apiece.

Newtown has now won 14 consecutive games this season and it will enter the Division I state tournament as the top overall seed. It will face the winner of Hamden and Suffield on June 3.

"It really just shows that we come out every year like we do the year before," Brophy said of the title. "We come out hard and we come out as a team. Every year is a new year and we never look back on the years before and see that it's going to be like that."

The loss ended a surprise run by New Fairfield, which upset New Milford 11-10 in triple overtime and Brookfield 17-9, to get into the final.

"We played our best game of the year against Brookfield and today, we came out and watched Newtown run the score up on us," New Fairfield coach Joe Robusto said. "We had the game taken to us. I feel like the team is better than the way we played today and we should've put up a better fight."