Lady Dalers Suffer Second Straight Class A Final Loss

The Farmingdale Lady Dalers were eight minutes away from a trip to the girls lacrosse state championships and avenging a loss in last year’s Class A final.

Then, all of a sudden, everything went wrong.

Farmingdale surrendered a four-goal lead in the final eight minutes of regulation and allowed two goals in overtime for a heartbreaking 15-14 loss to Bay Shore in the Class A final at the Dowling Sports Complex in Brookhaven Sunday evening.

The Lady Dalers appeared to have the game in hand after Nadine Hadnagy and Cassie Perettine scored two-man advantage goals 51 seconds apart and Kimberly Kolodny added her third tally of the game with 8:40 left for a 13-9 advantage.

But then the rains came and all hope for a victory slowly washed away.

Kaitlyn Arnold started the Bay Shore rally with a shot from the left slot 42 seconds after Kolodny’s goal and added a second goal 11 ticks after that to cut the Farmingdale lead to two. Caroline de Lyra then scored two goals of her own, the latter with 3:08 left to tie the game.

“I think we had a couple of real bad turnovers towards the end of regulation that cost us,” Farmingdale coach Shari Campbell said. “But when you have a four-goal lead, you’ve got to find a way to hang on.”

Each team scored on their opening possessions of the first three-minute overtime session, but Arnold scored what proved to be the game-winning goal with 51.1 seconds left when she went almost the length of the field before burying a shot in the lower side of the net.

The Lady Dalers won the opening faceoff of the second overtime and was moving the ball into the Bay Shore defensive zone before relinquishing possession. The Marauders were able to move the ball around the perimeter and, in the process, dwindled most of the remaining time on the clock.

“Towards the end of the game, when you get there, you stall it out,” Campbell said. “It’s tough to run and run and run, (but) that’s how you win championships as boring as that is. Until they put (a rule) in the women’s game, then teams are just going to stall the ball out until they get that last shot.”

In the final seconds, Farmingdale’s Maggie Fleming gained control of the ball and attempted a shot from the right slot, but it was blocked by Bay Shore defenseman Corinne Schmidt as the buzzer sounded. 

“I’m at a loss for words only because the end of the season with this particular group of kids just reenergized me as a coach,” Campbell said. “I walked off with my head proud and they left everything on the field.”

The Lady Dalers’ loss might not have been as heartbreaking as last year’s 14-7 setback to Northport in the Class A final that followed a 16-1 regular season, but it was just as painful.

“We don’t have to fix anything,” Campbell said. “We just have to play. We’re here for our eighth year in a row we made it to the Long Island championships. I always said the best lacrosse is played on Long Island and the rest is gravy. We’ll get back to work like we did last year and we’ll be back here again next year like we are every year.”

Hadnagy had four goals as did Kolodny, who had the lone Farmingdale tally in overtime. Colleen Reynolds added three goals for the Lady Dalers.

The play in the second half and overtime was far different than the first, in which the teams supplied plenty of offensive firepower for an 8-8 deadlock. The teams alternated the first six goals of the game, the first three coming in a 49-second span early in the session, before Farmingdale jumped out to a 5-3 lead on goals 42 seconds apart by Turturro and Kolodny with 11:31 remaining. But Bay Shore then got penalty shot goals by Arnold and de Lyra in the next two minutes to knot the game again at 5.

“They executed, we executed. We went on runs, they went on runs,” Campbel said. “It was a game of runs.”

Kolodny scored her second goal of the game and Hadnagy added a pair 54 seconds apart to give the Lady Dalers an 8-5 lead with 6:37 left, but the Marauders responded with three of their own, including a pair from Carly Cox off passes from Kyra Harney to tie it again. The latter came with 8.6 seconds left before halftime.