Chatham Girls' Lacrosse Can't Quite Top Mendham in Tournament of Champions Semifinals

WEST LONG BRANCH — All good things must come to an end, and on Tuesday afternoon, the Chatham girls' lacrosse season came to a halt.

The Cougars (20-4) fell 14-11 to Mendham in the semifinals of the Tournament of Champions at Monmouth University, despite a late rally and six goals from senior Meghan Murray.

"[This season] far exceeded my expectations," said Chatham head coach Deb Marriott. "I thought that we could maybe go as far as the state sectional final."

No. 2 seeded Mendham, which handed Chatham its first loss of the season in late April but fell to the Cougars in the Morris County finals, jumped out in front early with a 5-0 lead over the third-seeded Cougars. Two goals and an assist from Nicole Graziano, who finished with three goals and two assists, highlighted the scoring spree.

"In county finals [Chatham sophomore defender] Liz Hyde shut me down. Today it was an even bigger game and I thought I had to step up big," said Graziano, who was held to one goal in the final after scoring seven times in the first meeting. "If I wasn't getting it done on offense I had to step it up on defense. It's a team game and I definitely couldn't get it done myself."

The Cougars didn't lie down, though, as the team rallied to make it a one-goal game with 4:15 left in the first half. Senior Courtney Landolfe scored off of a free position, Murray added two goals and junior Cat McCutcheon beat Abby Witczak low to cap off the surge.

"We came out weak and we lost a lot of ground balls," said Murray. "We both wanted it. I think they just executed better."

However, the Minutemen added two goals to assume a 7-4 advantage at halftime.

"[Mendham was] all over," said Marriott. "They were coming up with it—it's a game of possession and they were getting the ball. That's critical. I think that we had spurts where we'd play our game and then we'd have spurts where we just didn't play our game. So we just weren't as consistent as we normally are."

Paige Russell, Aly Messinger and Meade Brewster scored right after the break to give Mendham a 10-4 edge just over three minutes into the second half.

"There's no one as good as Chatham," said Brewster. "If you can beat them once you can beat them again. I think that we came out and really played our game. It was Mendham lacrosse from the beginning to the end."

Landolfe responded with a pair of goals within eight seconds of each other, while Murray and senior Emma Ehler scored off of free positions to close it to 10-8 with about 13 1/2 minutes left to play.

"The reason why we had such a great season is because of their leadership," said Marriott. "They're just really good kids. They brought this team together. Whether they were on the field or off of it they were just a super bunch of seniors."

Three more goals from the Minutemen put Chatham in a hole it just couldn't dig itself out of.

"We just weren't coming up with the possession and we weren't making stops on defense, as we normally do," said Marriott.

Murray and Graziano traded goals to make it 14-9 with 3:35 showing on the clock, and Murray added two goals over the final 31.2 seconds to account for the final margin.