38 degrees. Windy and raining. Those were the first couple of words tweeted today from girl’s lacrosse versus Pennsauken as the game began.
The weather did not affect the Pirates one bit, despite allowing a goal to the Indians just 19 seconds into the game before going on to win by a final score of 16-4.
Cinnaminson quickly tied the game and then took the lead for good just minutes later.
The offense was dominant on a wet Wednesday during spring break, but much of the focus following the game was on the Pirates defense.
The Pirates received a six-goal effort from Grace Shallow and a three-goal effort from Shannon Forbes. There were five other goal scorers for Cinnaminson against Pennsauken.
“Defense is definitely something that we are focusing more on this year because no matter how many goals you put up, if you can’t stop them in the other end, you won’t be successful,” head coach Laura Curran said. “We’ve done several drills that work on help defense, slide defense and crashing. We need to protect the eight and not just worry about our girl. We plan on making it a strength when teams play us, shutting them down on defense.”
This is the second consecutive win for the Pirates after taking down Mainland on Monday. Their lone loss was by one-goal to Holy Cross, so the confidence level is rising among the girls.
“We know that we are good. We know that we are very smart. I trust them. They trust each other. We are very confident and feeling really good,” Curran said.
The Pirates clicked on all cylinders Wednesday with effortless passes from one end of the field to the other.
“Fortunately, these girls have been playing together now for five or six years, starting in middle school. Having eight seniors on the field at a time, they do know where each other is going to be. They know their weaknesses. They know their strengths. Transition is definitely something that we want to make a strength and we did that well today.”
The Pirates visit New Egypt on Friday at 3:45pm and Curran talked about staying focused in the second half of games they lead as something to improve upon prior to their next contest.
“We tend to get excited that we are up in the second half and we tend to kind of fall in the first 10 minutes of the second half. It doesn’t mean we settle. It doesn’t mean we relax. We need to pretend it is zero-zero and make sure we are just as focused in the first 10 minutes of the second half as we were at the start of the game. That really was our downfall against Holy Cross.”
