Girls’ Lacrosse Rolls Past Union Catholic 16-7

The Cranford girls' lacrosse team was having fun. And why not? When you score 16 goals against an opponent there's a lot to smile about. 

"I think our team played really well together," said captain Dina Mansour. "We've been working on teamwork. We're just trying to settle the ball down. I think we're doing great, we have a new coach and we have a different outlook on everything."

The Lady Cougars were hitting on all cylinders Monday afternoon as they cruised to a 16-7 victory over Union Catholic in Scotch Plains. Junior Nicole Kleiman had a sensational nine-goal performance to lead the way.

It was an excellent bounce-back effort after opening the season with a loss to perennial power Kent Place.

"We definitely came in fired up, we wanted to win real bad," said senior captain Shannon Slattery. "The second half wasn't as good as the first half, but it was definitely one of the better games that we played. Our first game was rough against Kent Place."

"It's great, it's a good confidence booster after our game with Kent Place," said senior captain Katie Pijanowski. "Our second game has definitely brought us up. The key was working together, communicating, working on transitions and how to improve passing and catching."

"Everybody's very excited," said Mansour. "It's our second game and first win. We're just basically pumped. We just want to keep going. We're ready for the season. This game we just came out fired up."

Besides Kleiman's triple hat-trick, Mai Lin Choy-Shan netted three goals and Christine Valentine added a pair for Cranford, which evened their record to 1-1.

"Nikki is taking our draws and she's great in the midfield," said first-year head coach Lauren Leddy. "She's great all-around. She came up huge today on attack. The scoring was definitely spread out, which was nice. We had a few assists all-around, so it's definitely all over the board, which is great. We definitely have a scoring attack."

Leddy has instilled a new attitude into her team, and the fresh approach is spilling over onto the field.

"A lot of these teams I'm not that familiar with, so I'm just telling the girls we need to play every game like it's a Kent Place, because that's how we're going to win. We can't ever overlook a team. We have a lot of scorers on the team. It was just going to take a little work."

The girls know what they need to work on and what they're doing right.

"We still have to work on our settled attack," Slattery said. "Our breakaways are awesome. We just went right to goal and we moved the goalie. We have to take what we did today and look at our goals versus shots on goal and think about how we can make all the shots on goal actual goals. I think we're going to have to make some really good plays and settle our attack."

"We're looking at what we can improve on and using that and using that in future games," said Pijanowski. "We want to go out with a bang and have a good season so that we can look back on it and know we did our best."

"We love it," said Slattery. "We're having so much fun."