Girls Lax Loses to Harriton For The First Time

They stood back collectively in stunned silence and absorbed, watching Harriton’s team rejoice on Tuesday afternoon. ’s girls’ lacrosse teams was feeling the momentary sting of experiencing something no other Red Raiders team had done before them—lose to Harriton.

The Red Raiders, who are the two-time defending state champions, fell, 14-13, in sudden death overtime to Harriton on Tuesday afternoon at Radnor high school.

The loss dropped Radnor to 10-3 overall, though the Red Raiders maintained first place with a 7-1 mark in the Central League, and were buoyed by four goals from Taryn Deck, and two goals each from Lindsay Grossman, Shannon Quinn and Kristen Norden. The victory pushed Harriton to 13-2 overall and the Rams stayed in the running for the Central League title, at 6-2.

Harriton’s Caleigh Foust provided the game-winning goal just 13 seconds into the first three-minute overtime period, finishing with a game-high five goals, followed by four goals from teammate Carli Sukonik and three goals from Laura Walzer.

Both goalies were exceptional, especially in the last minute of regulation, when Radnor’s Annie Woehling kept the game alive snaring a laser from Sukonik and Jaclyn Marshall stonewalled Radnor’s three attempts to keep it tied.

Foust’s goal was the crusher.

What can’t be lost, however, was the way a young Radnor team fought back from a large first-half deficit.

“That’s what we have to focus on, the things we need to improve, and that’s coming out with more intensity,” said Woehling, who’s bound for Princeton to play lacrosse. “We were the more timid team in the beginning of the game than they were. They took it to us, but you know what, we kept our heads up and we fought back. I know this was a big game for both of us, and I don’t know why we came out so timid. Maybe it’s a credit to Harriton, because I know they wanted to win this game just as bad as we did.”

Radnor coach Brooke Fritz was able to glean a number of key things about her young team on Tuesday. One, was composure. Harriton threw a stunning blow at Radnor at the outset, getting off to a 7-0 lead. Only to see Radnor dig out of that hole to score nine of the next 10 goals and lead 9-8 with 14:44 left in regulation on a Deck goal.

“We were down big against a very good team and we kept our composure, we battled back, this team is filled with character kids,” Fritz said. “In the beginning of the game, we were making too many mistakes. But I knew the fight was in this team all along. I wasn’t surprised we fought back, I was surprised Harriton fought back after we took the lead.”

Deck, who’s a sophomore and promises to only get better, said it could be good thing. “We realized we have to play our game, once we figured it out, we got better. We’ll come back from this.”