AUGUSTA — A complete performance was what Zach Stewart knew it would take for the Maranacook/Winthrop girls lacrosse team to come away with a result like this against a perennial contender.
From whistle to whistle, the first-year head coach’s team delivered nothing less Tuesday evening. The Black Bears found the net early, late and often and kept the opposing Cony Rams — whom they outscored in every period — at bay en route to a major 14-4 victory.
“It was all effort,” Stewart said. “All I wanted our athletes to do was to make sure they had 100 percent effort. We say it’s 99 percent effort, and that last 1 percent is getting off the field so the next person can come on and give 99 percent. We did that today.”
Ashley DeSchamp led the way with four goals for Maranacook/Winthrop, three of which came in the second quarter as the home team ran out to a 7-2 halftime lead. Celia Bergdahl, Cooper Davis, Alice Farren and Mya St. Pierre added two goals apiece for the Black Bears.
Bergdahl scored first for Maranacook/Winthrop (5-1), finding the net inside a minute to give the Black Bears an early lead. Casey Monson would tie it for Cony midway through the opening quarter, but Farren fired back for Maranacook/Winthrop to put the home team back in front.
Then came the most dominant period of the game for the Black Bears. DeSchamp scored goals with 10:24 and 9:28 left in the second quarter to make it 4-1 Maranacook/Winthrop. Abby Morrill answered for Cony (4-3) at 6:55 left in the half, but the Black Bears responded with three unanswered goals to take a 7-2 lead into the break.
“Like one of our captains, Tilden Tinkham, said (in our postgame team talk), we really just listened to each other today,” DeSchamp said. “We listen to each other during games, but today was like no other; we heard each other, and we took corrections, and we just ran with it, really.”
That continued in the second half as goals from DeSchamp, St. Pierre, Farren and Davis extended Maranacook/Winthrop’s lead to 11-4 through three. Davis and St. Pierre added goals in the fourth before a goal from Emerson Davis with only a second to go rounded out the 10-goal victory.
The decisive win was the fifth in as many victories for Maranacook/Winthrop, whose closest win prior to Tuesday was a 15-6 result over Winslow/Lawrence on Friday. That was also the last win of a four-game streak for the Black Bears, who then dropped a 12-9 contest Saturday against Brunswick.
The onus, Stewart said, was then on Maranacook/Winthrop to return to form after giving up seven unanswered goals in its only loss to date. That the Black Bears did so against a fellow capital-area squad that’s had their number in recent years, DeSchamp said, only made it sweeter.
“(We wanted this one) so bad — so bad,” said DeSchamp, who scored her 100th career goal in the Black Bears’ April 23 season opener against Lake Region. “We haven’t beaten them since my freshman year, so it felt really good to be back on top.”
Morrill had two of the four goals for Cony with Monson and Maci Freeman tallying the others. The loss snapped a four-game winning streak for the Rams.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
