WMHS Girls' Lacrosse Out in First Round of North Div. 1 Tourney

It’s that time of year when every game can be your last—tournament time.

On Tuesday, it was the last game for No. 14 Woburn Memorial High School as the girls' lacrosse team (10-11) was defeated 13-5 by No. 3 Concord-Carlisle High School (15-3) in the opening round of the North Division 1 tournament.

“The second half went better,” said WMHS coach Maggie Meagher.

Concord-Carlisle dominated the Tanners in the first, earning most of the face-offs, driving the ball to the net, and gaining a 9-0 lead over the Tanners. C-C's shots were straight forward and in tight to the crease against Woburn’s goalie Alex Varoutsos.

Eight Patriots scored in Tuesday’s game.

Rebecca Olsen led her team with three goals. Senior captain Jamie Potter, senior captain Lindsay Cook, Sophie Tilles and Jessie Castelline each recorded two goals and one assist. Josie Morrison added one goal and one assist. And both Courtney McCauley and Alexa Barrett had one assist.

For Woburn, Shannon Maguire scored four goals and Natalie McGuire added one.

“We had (Shannon) go in and take the draws and I think she wanted it, she got hungry. She wanted to go after it," said Meagher. "Little things like that, I think, change the game motivationally for the rest of the team when they see how hard someone else is working and then they go after it."

It looked as though Concord-Carlisle was going to finish out the first half blanking Woburn 9-0, but with 2:02 left in the first, the Tanners scored their first goal on Patriot goalie Melissa Mariano (five saves). Woburn held the ball at the blue line and then passed in the middle of the field for the charging goal.

“At the end of the first half we started taking steps backwards and going to play defense right away instead of challenging for the ball,” Meagher said. “And at halftime (I said), ‘Hey you guys, you need to pull together and you guys have to decide what you want to do. Do you want to let this go and just step back and get back on defense or do you want to run through it and go to goal and play aggressive?’

“And they made the choice to play aggressive and go to goal and it was good to see," she added. "I’m glad they definitely stepped it up that way and went to it."

“We definitely came out more in the second half and started believing in our game plan,” continued Meagher. “I can’t say a lot of stuff was the prettiest lacrosse that I’ve seen, but I think it definitely showed how hard we can work and when we believe we can go to the ball and go after it, what the outcome can be.”

Woburn continued its momentum in the second half. The Tanners were outscored 8-1 in the first, but evened it up 4-all in the second half.

The Tanners added two early scores to make it a 9-3 game. But only a couple minutes later a Woburn player was ejected after receiving a red card for hitting a Concord-Carlisle player in the back of the leg with her stick.

With Woburn down a girl, Concord-Carlisle put in two scores to take an 11-3 lead. But then Woburn put a goal past Patriot’s second-half goalie Greta White (3 saves) with 14:54 to play.

The Patriots were struggling to score—just as Woburn was early on. They were taking shots, but Varoutsos was defending as needed, saving attempts in the crease.

“(Varoutsos’) performance has been, just getting absolutely better and better as the season has gone on,” said Meagher. “She’s worked really hard ... I’m extremely proud of Alex. I don’t think we’d be in tournament if it wasn’t for her saves motivating us to keep going and score on the other end.”

"There’s still a lot we have to work on, but playing as hard as you can shows a lot how things can happen," she added.