Lady Rebel Lacrosse Drops Second in a Row

The Fairfax girls lacrosse team (0-2) hoped to catch a break as the game at Herndon (1-0) when five Hornet starters had to leave the game early to make a previous commitment to sing in the school’ s choir concert.

Unfortunately, the break never came as Herndon’ s Leslie Holbrook led a brutal offensive attack Thursday night, scoring a game-high six goals to help defeat the Rebels, 19-9.

The game was originally scheduled for 7:15 p.m. but was moved up an hour due to the concert. By that point however, the Hornets had already scored eight goals before the half and led by five.

Fairfax’ s Nicole Panagos and Leah Fargis performed valiantly against the Hornets on defense in the secondhalf by stopping several more scoring opportunities. The defensive effort helped Fairfax gain offensive momentum as four players, including Katie Derrick and Sam Bryan, scored two goals each.

“In the first quarter we started off really well but then we got ahead of ourselves and needed to slow down and get control,” Derrick said. “ But in the beginning of the second we had three goals right off the bat.”

Still, Herndon seniors Holbrook and Allie Aroesty combined for 11 goals and five assists to close out the game and give Fairfax its second loss in a row.

“[Herndon’ s] strength was taking the ball from behind and getting it off that first pass,” Fairfax coach Rachel Shafer said after the game. “ I think [we have] heart and hustle. They work hard and are willing to step up against these teams who might be of a better caliber and have better stick skills but they don’ t give up.”

Sam Bryan also came out strong and rallied her team to score five times on the Hornets to give them a total of nine goals on the night – three times the number of goals in their first game, earlier in the week.

“We are way younger [this season] I feel we can build a lot better off of the younger players and feel like we will have a stronger team by the end of the season.”

Shafer said she was impressed with her team’ s improvement. She will continue to focus on building the team back up.

“We are extremely young with the majority underclassmen and we are just taking it step by step,” Fairfax head coach Rachel Shafer said after the game. “ I said ‘ let’ s try to score more goals than the last game. Let’s try to keep them to two less goals than the last game. We did exactly that. They only had 10 more than we did and every game we are only going to get better and better.”

Fairfax plays at Thomas Jefferson at 7:15 p.m. on March 31.