With two minutes left in the second half, Brooke Keough ’19 swept past her defender and scored a goal, securing the victory for Andover on Wednesday. Despite being down 6-2 at halftime, Andover Girls Lacrosse came back to win 8-7 against Middlesex.
Andover began its competitive season this week with games against Hotchkiss and Middlesex. On Saturday, Andover fell to Hotchkiss 14-7, but rebounded the following Wednesday, earning the team’s first victory against Middlesex in five years.
Against Middlesex, Andover was able to score six goals in the second half, while only allowing Middlesex to score one. Andover fought until the end of the game, according to Head Coach Heidi Wall.
“We didn’t count ourselves out in the game. We were down 2-6 at the half, and we just kept digging away one goal at a time and we never decided that we were going to fold over,” said Wall.
According to Co-Captain Katherine McIntire ’19, the team’s offensive surge is the result of intense practices following the Hotchkiss defeat.
McIntire wrote, “In practice on Monday and Tuesday, we worked a lot on making better cuts and transition passing. We also are working on playing overall with more aggression and intensity during practice. I think this is super important because we need to push each other to get better and be prepared for games to handle pressure from other teams.”
Wall added, “We have been working a lot on our transition passing and cutting, including catching under pressure and putting yourself in a place to score during a fast break. After practicing it this week, it was a clear improvement in the game.”
During the game, Andover struggled with maintaining possession of the ball, according to McIntire.
“The score doesn’t reflect it, but we actually did have lots of opportunities, because we had lots of draw controls and caused turnovers on defense. However, we kind of gave up these chances by losing the ball breaking it out of the defensive zone and turning it over on attack,” McIntire wrote.
In the game against Hotchkiss, three of the team’s seven goals were scored by midfielder Juliet Gildehaus ’20.
Despite having only played together for about three weeks, as well as adding many new members to the team, the team dynamic is already very strong, according to Lily Rademacher ’21.
“There’s a lot of healthy, energetic competition and everyone’s just really excited to be out there, getting the chance to play. We’ve also been focusing a lot on the process of constructive criticism lately, and Coach Wall made sure that our buddies were people who played similar positions to us so that we could work on giving and receiving helpful comments on our games,” Rademacher wrote.
This Friday, Andover will host Nobles with hopes of earning a winning record early in the season.
