Friends Girls Drop IAAM B Conference Lacrosse Final to Mercy, 13-7

It was a season full of excitement for the Friends School girls lacrosse team, yet the Lady Quakers could never find the right potion to handle the Magic of Mercy High School.  The squad lost 13-7 in the IAAM B conference championship game played at the Gerstell Academy in Finksburg on Saturday.

It was the third time that Friends has lost to Mercy this year, the first by one goal in overtime at Friends on April 1, then at Mercy on April 22 by two.

“We know we’re the top two teams in the league,” Friends head coach Mandy Hudson said after the game.  “The reality is, we compete with this team.”

However the Magic, playing their first season in the B conference after dropping down from the A, proved to have too much speed for the young Lady Quaker team, which had to replenish after graduating several seniors last year.  Friends started five freshmen – including the goalie – and had only one senior, defender Isabel Swicklik.

After getting on the scoreboard first via an unassisted goal by Ella Cooper less than two minutes into the game, Friends saw Mercy score four goals in six minutes to take a 4-1 lead.

The Magic took advantage of their speed, with players constantly scoring by cutting in front of the crease after taking feeds from behind the goal.  Shannon Aikens scored twice, followed by Emily Borkowski, who lit the scoreboard two times.  Taylor Hicks assisted on two of those first four goals and Borkowski on another.  Too often, Lady Quaker goalie Rose Woolson was facing point-blank shots, many of them quick-sticks.

The Lady Quakers regrouped to score three of the next five goals to narrow the margin to two by the half.  Abby Corkum and Cooper both scored off of Emma Sissman feeds, with the Magic’s Aubrey Wetzelberger sandwiching a goal between the two Friends scores.  Sissman then found the net to narrow the margin to 5-4, but Mercy’s Anna Mohlhenrich scored with just 3.6 seconds left to give the Magic the two-goal halftime margin.

Friends fell into a deeper hole in second half play when Mercy opened with another four-goal run to grab a 10-4 lead with 10:38 left to play.

After Cooper broke the run for Friends, the Magic scored three more times to seal the victory.  Cooper scored twice in the final 90 seconds to bring the Lady Quakers to within six.

Swicklik was playing in her third straight B conference championship game and said that, whereas it was exciting, there was also pressure.

“It’s our third time so I really wanted to come up with a win,” she said.

“They’re very fast, they’re very good,” Swicklik said of Mercy.  “We tried to do our best and get into the eight on defense but they were good at cutting.”

Hudson said the team has typically been a tighter-marking team on defense, but noted they were a little slow on the uptake, especially in the first part of the first half.

“They scored four quick-stick goals right on the crease,” Hudson said of the Magic’s early run.  “Unfortunately, we stood a little bit and that put us a little behind on the steps through the crease,” she said.

“So we kept encouraging the girls to try to stay tight on their stick, and we started to take that away.”

Hudson said nerves may have affected the team, especially for such a young squad, yet some of the game’s fundamentals also played a role.

“We needed draw control, we needed ground balls, which we might have come up short on both a little bit today,” she said.

Nevertheless, she took pride in the 14-4 season.

“It was a great game, a good learning experience for us all.  I’m so proud of these girls.”

Cooper, who was the team’s leading scorer, finished with five goals.  Corkum and Sissman each scored once, with Sissman adding two assists.  Cooper, a junior midfielder, finished the season with 98 goals and 40 assists.