A trio of Catonsville Lacrosse Club teams avoided the lure of white sandy beaches and a chilly Atlantic Ocean at Ocean City, Md. and ventured over to Northside Park on the bayside at 125th St. long enough to make a victorious and memorable splash in the Brine Girls Beach Lacrosse Festival.
The Catonsville U15 B Bateman, U11 Lightning A and U9 Tykers squads all went undefeated and won championships in the tournament held June 5-7.
The U15 squad, coached by Brian Bateman, the 1990 Catonsville Times male Athlete of the Year, was the oldest of the champions and it was the most sentimental because it was the last time those same girls would all play together.
"It was bittersweet because I know a bunch of them are going to move on and keep playing in high school," said Bateman, whose own daughter, Alli Bateman, will attend Glenelg Country School next year along with her tournament champion teammate Addi Schmidt.
Catonsville High will welcome eighth graders Carly Gibbons, Maggie Marion, Abbi Boehl, Emma Meacham, Sophie Brooks, Lilly Scott, Maddie Harding and Paige Adelsberger from the U15 squad.
Annie Wright, Alex Sullivan, Jenna Gwinn and Libby Rehkemper will attend Mount de Sales.
Sam Silverman moves on to Bryn Mawr, Maddie Schwing will attend Notre Dame Prep and Ella Ames is headed for Carver High in Towson.
Madison McPherson is moving out of the country and will play at the International School of Manila.
In their last game together, they defeated the Eastern Shore Club, 9-5, to complete a perfect 6-0 mark in Ocean City.
Bateman had seen the unique championship trophy before and was craving it like a dozen steamed crabs.
"I was telling the girls before the game, I always wanted one of those crab trophies," Bateman said. "I said, 'I haven't asked too much for myself, but I'm asking you to play your hearts out because I want that silly trophy.' So they win, and new people took the tournament over, and they don't give the plaque with the hard shell crab and a lacrosse ball anymore. I just started laughing to myself because I thought that was pretty cool."
Before the title game, Catonsville defeated its first five opponents by a combined score of 36-9.
The most impressive triumph was a 7-0 whitewash of the Yellow Jackets, of New York, on Saturday night.
Both teams came into the match with unblemished 3-0 marks.
"We didn't miss a pass or a catch or a ground ball," Bateman said. "It was the best game they played."
All the teams they played against were club teams and even though the Catonsville girls were from the local youth program, 12 of the girls currently play on various club teams throughout Maryland.
That didn't stop them from supporting their community program
"When I was a kid everybody was always there, now it's hard now because a lot of them play club so everybody making practice is harder," Bateman said. "Nobody seemed to have any kind of attitude if somebody missed something. They did a great job of just playing and being good teammates.
During the regular season, Catonsville went 8-1 in the Maryland Youth Lacrosse Association (MYLA) league.
But wins and losses aren't what Bateman will remember most.
That came during an end-of-season team party.
"I got a card that I'm going to keep forever because, other than just signing their name, each one of them put some little sentence or something and their personality was in their sentence," Bateman said. "Some of them were sarcastic and some of them were serious. It was pretty cool."
Bateman, whose oldest daughter, Sulli, is a sophomore at Catonsville High, also has a younger daughter, Lizzy, who played on the Catonsville Tykers U11 title team in Ocean City
The Catonsville 9U team, coached by Ricky Sanchez and Megan Regan, had to overcome some adversity in the championship game 6-5 win over Lutherville Hines
Catonsville built a 5-2 lead, but had to play down a girl for four minutes when one received a red card.
Another player got sick during the game so a comfortable lead dwindled.
"At one point, we are like 'Okay, we feel good now and then we go down a girl and we are like, 'Oh no, what are we going to do?', but we held on," Sanchez said. "It was a really thrilling game."
It completed a 6-0 mark in Ocean City that included two rain-shortened victories because of thunderstorms on Saturday night.
"The girls jumped out quick," Sanchez said. "They are solid. Most of them have played together for a while. They definitely worked well as a team."
Several of the girls won the championship at the beach in 2014.
This year's squad, which included Elena Aldave, Kira Balis, Casey Fisher, Katie Gorski, Mia Heyward, Campbell Peters, Abbey Regan, Mary Cate Rehkemper, Ava Sanchez, Isabel Shurtlef, Madelyn Taylor and Natalie Wallace, also went 7-0 during the regular season in the MYLA league.
"We were pleasantly surprised. I don't think any of the coaches expected us to be that successful," Sanchez said. "I give all the credit to the girls. They are such a receptive bunch and they worked hard. Every day at practice was fun and they definitely earned it."
They finished 15-1 overall and went 2-1 in the Lax Splash Tournament in Baltimore the weekend before Ocean City.
The only blemish all season was a 9-8 loss to Carroll Manor in the finals of the Lax Splash tournament.
They had beaten Carroll Manor during the MYLA regular season.
The Catonsville Lightning U11 was the only champion that didn't win every game in Ocean City, but they ended the season with an unbeaten overall record of 21-0-1.
The only non-victory came in the fourth game of the tournament when they tied the Yellow Jackets, of Long Island, 3-3.
It was one of the teams Jay Marszal, who coached the team along with Helenmarie Hahn and Matt Mundorf, feared the most.
"I thought we had a good shot (to win it), but I thought the two toughest teams would be the two teams from Long Island, the Yellow Jackets," Marszal said.
In the championship game, Marszal's squad upended MC Elite, 6-5.
"We were up 6-3 and they came back in the last couple minutes and scored a couple goals and they actually had a chance at the end to tie it up but they lost the ball," Marszal said.
Catonsville went 5-0-1 and allowed just 11 goals in the games which were 25 minutes long.
"Down there, the tournament games are so short you have to jump on top fast because it's too hard to try and come back," he said.
The Lightning included: Frannie Hahn, Mimi Mundorf, Stephanie Marszal, Jaclyn Marszal, Josie Pell, Lizzie Bateman, Grace Rudy, Adrianna Silvestri, Anna Regan, Chloe Lahane, Cydney Lisk, Kate O'Farrell, Milena Stephen, Neve O'Farrell, Ema Kennedy, Lauryn Kasten, Bridgid Beack, Adele Jones and Sarah Johnson.
While the other two Catonsville teams that won at the ocean have their girls spread out over different club teams, the U11 Lightning was fortunate to have them all play for Bitmore Lacrosse so they avoided any conflicts between the team's schedules.
"A lot of rec programs in Baltimore County and Carroll County have trouble keeping their rec players around because they require them to be there all the time," Marszal said. "Bitmore is very rec-friendly."
There were seven age brackets at the Beach Lax Festival and Catonsville teams won three and finished second in two of them.
The finalists were the Catonsville Meyers team in the U11 B bracket and the Catonsville Hahn squad in the U13 A group. The U13 A squad won the MYLA league championship.
"This if the fifth year Catonsville has gone down and this is the most teams Catonsville has had in the finals," said Marszal, whose daughters on the team started at age five and have stayed together in the program ever since.
Keeping players from the community together is something he hopes can continue.
"As long as we keep the best players we will always be good," he said.