Long Beach Slings Past Lady Cougars Lax

It was certainly a learning experience on Thursday night as the 3-0 Long Beach Marines visited Kennedy High and handed the Lady Cougars a 15-4 loss in non-league action.

Long Beach took little time to get off and rolling as they got a quick goal from Emily McLaughlin to break a scoreless tie. The Marines poured it on from there, getting two more goals from McLaughlin to open up a 3-0 lead before Kennedy finally struck.

Morgan Kitton won a draw after the third and she made a couple of nice moves and beat the Long Beach keeper to get the Cougars on the board. Kitton was Kennedy's energy player, and she left shortly after the second half began with an apparent leg injury and did not return.

"We have been really bitten by the injury bug," coach Keri Andree said. "It's hard to to get momentum going when you keep losing players to injury."

After Kitton trimmed the Marines lead to two, Long Beach quickly answered. McLaughlin scored her fourth goal of the game, and Jillian Piazza added one as well to make the score 5-1, and then Kennedy started to impress its coach.

"In the first half I thought they played with a lot of heart and a lot of go-to," Andree said. "We really tried to work up the second string so that they could be competitive."

Kennedy (0-3) was able to score two quick goals, the latter of which was scored by Samantha Rothery on a nice move in front of the goal to cut the lead to just two again, but Megan Gallagher tallied two goals late in the half to increase the lead to four.

The Cougars would never come closer than that again.

The second half began with a barrage of goals from Long Beach. Five straight goals from the Marines opened their lead up to 12-3, and then Kennedy was able to notch their fourth and final goal when Samantha Esposito was able to skip the ball past Allie Kaplan. She wasn't disappointed in her team's efforts.

"Long Beach is a much better ranking than we are," Esposito said. "I think we held it together very well."

Long Beach capped out the scoring with three more goals before all was said and done, including the sixth of the game for McLaughlin, who also had five assists in the game.

"We came out strong, and they were playing a different defense than us," McLaughlin said. "It made it very easy for me to go to the net and get a good shot off."

Nicole Isardi thought the way to help this team get better for next game was a very simple formula.

"We need to play with more heart," Isardi said. "We're going to work on our game, and I think by the end of the season, we will be a very good team."

The Lady Cougars will go for their first win today at 2 p.m. when they host Seaford.