Video: Perfect Tiverton Girls' Lacrosse Team Wears Division II State Crown

There is a new championship glint in the eye of the Tiger.

The girls’ lacrosse team capped a perfect season early Saturday evening by defeating previously unbeaten Lincoln High School, 12-8, at Rhode Island College in Providence in the Division II state championship match.

Megan Raposa drilled 4 goals (earning “Most Valuable Player” honors for the title clash), Kara Lotz and Sam Welchman both netted 3 goals, Maya Bergandy tallied 2 goals, and netminder Alex Azevedo brushed aside 12 shots as the Tigers led from start to finish while taming the Lions and finished an unblemished 2011 campaign with a 17-0 record.

Raposa scored the first goal of the match just 26 seconds following the opening whistle and Tiverton never trailed the rest of the way, breaking out of a 5-5 deadlock early in the second period with a five-goal outburst in a span of 7:24 which settled the issue. Buoyed by a large and vocal throng of supporters, the Tigers used their superior speed, quickness and depth to throttle the high-scoring Lions and earned a state title in just the program’s fifth season of existence.

“I’m so excited right now and so happy for our girls, who worked very hard this season and had a lot of fun,” said first-year Tiverton Coach Emily DuBreil. “This season has been like a dream for us.”

And one with a very happy ending. Although the Tigers dominated for most of the first half, they exited for intermission with just a 5-4 edge which Lincoln erased in the initial four minutes of the final chapter on Jillian DeSimone’s third and final goal of the contest. Undaunted, Tiverton countered with its decisive eruption fueled by two Karzenski goals and solo scores from Lotz, Raposa and Bergandy to open a 10-5 cushion with 11:29 remaining.

“It was back-and-forth and we knew we didn’t want to play that kind of game,” DuBreil said. “We wanted to settle down our offense and work for good shots and we did.”

Lincoln, however, refused to quit and drew to within 10-7 with 5:32 left on a pair of goals by Ashley Moreau (who also finished with 3 scores). Lotz and Lincoln’s Brittany Redding then exchanged tallies during the ensuing three minutes before Bergandy put an exclamation point on Tiverton’s ultimate triumph with a goal on a penalty shot at the 1:50 mark.

The Tigers spent the final 110 seconds smartly playing “keep-away” from the frustrated Lions, who responded with two yellow-card infractions and one red-card expulsion (including a blow to the head of Karzenski in the closing seconds) before the final buzzer mercifully sounded.

A key to Tiverton’s success was its containment of DeSimone, who entered Saturday’s contest with an incredible total of 100 goals this season. The gifted DeSimone produced a “hat trick,” but the Tigers minimized the damage by hounding her throughout the contest.

“We knew Jill was a great player and we knew we had to hold her down and we did as well as we could,” DuBreil said. “We kept Jackie Wilson on her defensively and I knew Jackie would be level-headed and not do anything wild and be able to keep up with Jill. We double-teamed Jill every time we could and when she beat that, Alex (Azevedo) was there.”

While praising the entire Tiverton roster, DuBreil reserved special plaudits for Raposa, who joined Azevedo as the lone seniors on the Tigers’ squad.

“Megan has been so great all season,” DuBreil said. “She has always given 110 percent and she always wants to win and she wants the team to succeed. She’s a very energetic girls and everyone just feeds off her energy.”

At the conclusion of the match, all members of both teams received individual awards and team plaques from George Finn, director of athletics at Barrington High School and boys’/girls' lacrosse director of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League.

Reflecting on the season, DuBreil said the championship march was totally unforeseen.

“I was coming in as a new coach this year and none of us knew what to expect,” DuBreil said. “We just took it game by game, but after a while, I knew we had something special here. This team was very close and everyone contributed.”

And gave the eye of the Tiger a new championship glint.

(A stat correction was made to an original earlier version of this post. Tigers player Sam Welchman scored 3 goals during the game. Patch apologizes for the error.)

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