Manchester Valley's offense gets most of the attention, but its overlooked defense continued an impressive run in the state girls lacrosse semifinals, baffling Southern, of Anne Arundel County, with its switching defenses and holding its ninth opponent this season to three goals or fewer.
The defending state champion Mavericks went into Friday night's Class 2A-1A state semifinal holding opponents to 4.76 goals. The unit led by Sami Chenoweth, Laurel George, Rosalia Cappadora and Morgan Hoff stifled a Southern team averaging 13.3 goals in the playoffs and came away with a 17-3 win at Bel Air.
“We’re all close friends and we get along, so we communicate really well,” said Hoff. “We work together and we have a lot of different options on defense so that makes it easier to stop them. We switch around and I think that throws them off because they’re coming down the field and they’re expecting what we’re going to do and we’re always changing it.”
The No. 2 Mavericks (18-0) advance to meet Queen Anne’s, a 17-4 winner over Loch Raven in the other semifinal, for the title Tuesday or Wednesday at Stevenson University in Owings Mills. The game will be a rematch of last year’s semifinal won by Manchester Valley, 9-8.
Friday night, the Mavericks had too much speed, quickness and togetherness for the Bulldogs (12-6) to counter. Southern, which defeated Patterson Mill, 15-8, in the regional final was making its first trip to the state semifinals since 2008 – two years before Manchester Valley debuted as a varsity program.
But they ran up against the best public school team in the Baltimore area, a Mavericks team that has won 24 straight and is outscoring its opposition by 11 goals per game.
The Mavericks scored two goals in the first two minutes and Allie Little’s extra-man goal with 16:38 left in the first half made it 4-0.
The Bulldogs got two back on Molly Barkman’s free-position goal and Drew Dowgiallo’s goal to cut it to 4-2 with 10:46 left in the half. However, Southern would not score again until the beginning of the second half.
In the meantime, the Mavericks finished the half with eight goals as junior midfielder and Maryland commit Lizzie Colson, whom Southern coach Arvak Marshall said was the best player his team has seen this year, scored four of her six goals in the run.
Sydney Davis scored the first goal of the second half for the Bulldogs to pull within 12-3, but the Mavericks then reeled off five straight goals to finish it off."We just weren't patient on offense a lot of it," Marshall said, "and kind of forced some passes here and there, but they just were good in transition… They're extremely fast in transition and we weren't stopping body. When you let them run by you, it makes it hard. They're a very, very, very strong team.