Lakeville North Girls Lacrosse Knock Off No. 5 Stillwater

To put it mildly, it’s been a bit of a challenging year for the Lakeville North High girls this spring. But Friday’s win helped make it better.

The ninth-ranked Panthers played their best lacrosse of the season and surprisingly dominated fifth-ranked Stillwater in a 15-9 non-conference win at home.

After going 15-1 and making the final four last season as a combined Lakeville North/South team, the two programs went their separate ways this spring. Last winter the Lakeville lacrosse program itself was in jeopardy as the school board recommended cutting the sport for budget reasons. The Lakeville lacrosse teams eventually dodged that bullet, but in combination with the split and graduation losses, Lakeville North was in large measure starting over this season.

The Panthers also have just one senior starter and no juniors on the roster. They rely on a large corps of talented sophomores, along with a handful of ninth and eighth graders.

Still, despite it all, the Panthers have been very competitive this season, losing only to Minnesota girls lacrosse powers No. 2 Eden Prairie, No. 4 Bloomington Kennedy and No. 1 Blake.

All of which made Friday’s win over the Stillwater Ponies extra sweet.

“This is a very big win,” said Lakeville North head coach Kate Leavell. “Coming back from a rebuild. Stillwater is an incredible team so we were expecting maybe a close game if we were lucky. So we’re really excited that we were able to pull this one off.”

Stillwater’s only loss coming into the contest had been a 20-9 defeat at No.1 ranked Blake, but Lakeville North stunned the Ponies with a 10-5 opening half.

Tied at 4-all with 13:51 to play in the first half, the Panthers scored five straight goals to take a 9-4 lead. Freshman forward Kacie Waagbo and sophomore midfielder Hannah Koloski powered in two goals each during the run, while the Lakeville North defense and senior goalie Nora Vee shut down the Ponies.

The second half was more-or-less even, but Stillwater could never close the early deficit to less than three goals.

Stillwater’s Sammi Reiter and Hannah Dickman scored the first two goals of the season half to cut Lakeville North’s lead to 10-7 with 22:49 to play.

But the Panthers reasserted themselves and scored the next four goals to regain command of the game.

“I feel the teamwork was excellent tonight,” said Leavell. “They moved the ball really well. They found each other on the field and they didn’t just try to run it up there. The communication was great.”

Lakeville North improved to 7-3 on the season. Stillwater fell to 9-2 overall.

 It was a tough loss for the Ponies.

 “Very disappointing,” said Stillwater head coach Rick Reidt. “We didn’t win the ground balls in the middle of the field. We lost the majority of the center draws. And we didn’t shoot well. We shot into the goalie a lot.

“They outplayed us,” Reidt added. “They were faster. They’re a very good team.”

Lakeville North’s swarming defense and goalie Vee shut down the high-scoring Stillwater offense for long stretches Friday. The Ponies came into the contest averaging 14.2 goals a game.

Koloski had five goals to lead Lakeville North. Waagbo had three goals, Lauren Storhoff and Hannah Tillou added two each, while Emmie Madsen, Logan Dobratz and Molly McHugh had one goal apiece.

Waagbo added five assists to her three goals for a big offensive night.

“The best part was probably just us working our harder,” said Waagbo. “This was probably the best game I’ve seen our girls do.”

Waagbo noted that the Panthers passed the ball well Friday.

“We definitely made sure our passes were in the right spots in lots of traffic,” Waagbo added. “We definitely did a good job on that.”

“I think we played together as a whole probably way better than we have the past few games,” said Koloski. “Like she said we had really good catching and passing. We just seemed to get to the ground balls faster and were able to catch them. And also placing our shots, too.”

Senior forward Hannah Dickson led Stillwater’s offense with four goals. Reiter had three, Emily Gould and Dana Almquist one each.

Lakeville North hosts tenth-ranked Bloomington Jefferson (7-1) Tuesday in a match starting at 7:30 p.m.

Stillwater hosts Woodbury/East Ridge (5-5) Monday in a game starting at 6 p.m.