Growing Pains For Girls Lacrosse

If Tewksbury High girls lacrosse coach Joel McKenna wants to know why his team is off to an 0-3 start in the 2011 season, all he has to do is look at his roster.

With only three seniors in the starting line-up, the Redmen have some growing up to do.

"We're three games in and we haven't hit the win column yet, but that's not a real surprise," said McKenna after his team lost to perennial Merrimack Valley Conference power Andover Friday afternoon. "We're very young and a lot of these guys just started playing lacrosse for the first time (in high school). We're getting more and more young players who have played youth lacrosse, but we're still a very young team."

Tewksbury lost its first two games, to Lowell and Central Catholic, by 11 goals each. On Friday, the Redmen notched their highest offensive total of the season in a 15-7 loss to defending MVC champion Andover.

Junior attacker Alina Rosmarinofski led the Tewksbury effort with three goals, while sophomore Melissa Peters scored twice and seniors Michelle Tully and Nicole Devoe scored a goal apiece.

"We've been off to a slow start, but this is a monster improvement over last week," McKenna said. "You can see the improvement game by game, so that's exciting for me. We had a real good season two years ago, but last year we ran nine freshmen in and out of the line-up, so we're still climbing up the hill as far as development goes."

Devoe, Tully and goaltender Lauren Melski are the three seniors who start for Tewksbury, but after that it's all youngsters. In addition to Peters, sophomores Kim Tecce, Ashley Pozzuto, Abby Donoghue, Kelli Sugrue, Taylor Lirakis and Francesca Arcari all started aginst Andover on Friday. Rosmarinofski and Jamie Flynn are the two juniors in the line-up.

"All I expect from these guys this year is for them to just keep getting better and better," McKenna said. "Melissa Peters is a very good player who made the conference all-star team last year as a freshman, and Kim Tecce is a vocal leader who the girls like to follow, so it's exciting to see some of the younger players do well.

"It's all about how quickly they can improve and keep growing each year," McKenna said. "I'm just trying to let them know that when we're on the bottom of the scoreboard, that's when character has to be built."

McKenna saw some of that Friday as the Redmen, who trailed 11-3 at the half, played Andover even (4-4) in the second half.

"That's all Iwant from these guys," McKenna said. "I want them to be scrapping away at the end of games. They can't let losing games like this get to them and drag them down."

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