Friday 4/5 – Andover: 2, Nobles: 13
Wednesday 4/10 – Andover: 17, Deerfield: 7
On Friday, Girls Lacrosse faced a strong Noble and Greenough (Nobles) team and ultimately took its first loss of the season. However, on Wednesday, Andover was able to bounce back and take a win against Deerfield.
According to Quiana Bell ’26, the team worked a lot on defense and communication going into the game against Nobles. Despite Nobles managing to score 13 goals, Bell thought that the defense communicated and performed well, implementing what they had worked on in practice.
Bell said, “Obviously, we did lose, which wasn’t the best, but I feel like the things that we worked on we did execute pretty well. Leading up to the game we worked a lot on our team defense, sliding, communicating on who’s going to ball versus double teams or triple teams… And I think, considering how well Nobles’ offense worked together, that our defense did a good job executing the things we did practice. Our slides were good, I feel like we were communicating well, and well, I feel like while the score didn’t really reflect that, it was definitely like an upgrade to what we have been doing in the past.”
Lola Aguirre ’26 highlighted the team’s high energy throughout the game, even when they were down by many goals. Aguirre pointed out that everyone celebrated and applauded when Charley Drouin ’25 scored an amazing behind the back shot.
“We were all very energetic going into the game. We had a team meeting before talking about the types of energy we wanted to bring to the game and how we wanted to present ourselves. So, going into the game we were very energized and we kept that up even though we were down. For example, in the third quarter when Charley had a BTB (behind the back) shot, we all cheered and congratulated her for that. So, very energetic,” said Aguirre.
Bell believed that the team had difficulty transitioning the ball from defense to offense on Saturday and had some preventable turnovers. In addition, Bell thought that the team could work on offball movement on offense, creating space for teammates, and ultimately making better scoring chances.
Bell said, “We had a lot of trouble finishing our plays. We were able to make the plays on defense, pick up the ball, but then we would either make a bad pass and throw it out of bounds or we would just not move the ball fast enough and we would get intercepted… [It] would cause these turnovers and then if we did make it all the way to offense we had trouble breaking through. They played a backer, which is basically when they have a double team always on ball, so I feel like we were doing a lot of ball watching and not being very proactive. We weren’t cutting to the ball, we weren’t making space. We clogged up the middle and that didn’t help us make any goal scoring opportunities.”
Although the team did not score a goal until the end of the third quarter, Aguirre noted the team’s resilience and determination to score.
“The team… did a very good job keeping our heads up and keep playing because that’s something that a lot of teams have trouble with when you’re losing by that much and you haven’t even made it onto the scoreboard. A lot of teams just quit and we didn’t,” said Aguirre.
Ellie Parker ’25 described the team’s performance against Deerfield as a well-rounded victory. She highlighted the team’s connection on defense and offense, the strong energy, and the success of the draw team.
Parker said, “We played very controlled, together team defense which built well into our team offense. Our draw team did a great job working together to win the draws which were a key part of the team’s success… We worked together super well and supported each other all over the field… the atmosphere was great, especially the sideline energy as we really hyped up everyone after every goal which was super fun. We held our composure really well. Deerfield was a strong team but we held possession of the ball during key parts of the game, and prevented them from setting up and getting any more chances than they did.”
Moving forward, Aguirre says that the team will continue to build on its chemistry. In addition, they will study the opposing teams through film and get an understanding of what they should focus on in attack, defense, and teamwork.
“[That’s] something that definitely remains in the front of our heads. Just having fun with each other… We have three games in the next week, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, so in order to prepare for that, those games, since they’re all different opponents, we’re going to look at the films individually, analyze how they play, what set pieces do they have, what is their style of play on attack, how do they play defense, zone, backer, and what shots we could take against their goalie that will have a higher percentage, and we will work to play together,” said Aguirre.
Girls Lacrosse will go up against Milton on Friday.
