The Council Rock South girls lacrosse team traveled up to Quakertown on Friday night for a non-league game.
It was a 9-6 win as well as a lesson learned for the Golden Hawks.
“We can’t come out flatfooted,” CR South junior Meg Rafter said. “We have to come out strong and keep working.”
Quakertown stunned the Golden Hawks by putting up a 2-0 lead. Keira Shaw netted the first goal a little over seven minutes into play, then five minutes later Liv Stover get the second with an assist from Katelyn Derstine.
CR South finally got on the board with a goal by Amanda Green a minute later.
With 4:14 to go, CR South’s Amy Loving received the ball from Elizabeth Hearn and found the net to send the game into halftime tied, 2-2.
“The first half they really caught us off guard,” Rafter said. “We didn’t come out as hard as we should have and that hurt us, but seeing the score 2-0 definitely motivated us to work harder.”
Rafter got the lead for CR South five minutes into play with an assist from Loving, and from there it seemed that the Golden Hawks had found themselves. Hearn followed that with a natural hat trick, Kelly Longmore scored on a free position to extend the lead to what appeared to be a commanding 7-2 tally.
But the Panthers weren’t having it.
They answered with a goal by Cameron Hagerty, assisted by Casey Rosenberger.
Hearn popped one in from Longmore on a man-up to get it back for the Golden Hawks but Hagerty scored for Quakertown to make it 8-4.
Katie Deal netted the final tally of the evening for CR South to make it 9-4, but the Panthers showed their mettle by scoring the last two goals of the game in the final 1:18, with Stover getting one with an assist from Isabelle Kave and Hagerty the second with just 11.5 seconds to go in the game.
“This game we weren’t communicating that much,” said Green, a senior. “It’s still early in the season and everyone is trying to figure out their role on the team so it’s hard right now but we’re getting better every day.
“We’ve made it to the playoffs the last two years and my sophomore year was the first time we had a home game. We haven’t gotten past the first round and this year our goal is to have a home playoff game, hopefully win that game and get past the first round and further than that. I think we definitely have the capability to do that.”
Hearn, a sophomore who started last year as a freshman, has stepped up as a leading scorer for the Golden Hawks this year.
“Last year I played a lot and that was a good experience,” she said. “I’ve grown a lot as a player and I came into this season with more confidence. The first year was scary but the older players accepted me right away and that really helped.”
On Monday, CR South opened up the Suburban One League National Conference season with a 10-8 road win over Pennridge after trailing 5-4 at halftime.
Loving had three goals and one assist, Zoe Brossman netted two goals and one assist, Hearn and Rafter contributed two goals apiece and Longmore scored one for the Golden Hawks.
For Quakertown, the loss to CR South felt like a win.
“We went into the game thinking we had no shot, especially coming off of two losses,” said Stover, a senior. “We were really down on ourselves. But we just got that fire and got things going.
“Even though we lost this game, I think it’s a turning point for us. We played as a team and we hung with a team that went to the playoffs. That makes us feel good and we’ll take that with us.
`“We had the momentum at the end and if we’d had more time, I think we could have won. I’m really proud of us.”
Grace Stout, a senior, made 10 saves in goal for the Panthers.
“To be brutally honest, I thought we were going to get annihilated,” she said. “But we kicked butt. I feel so good about that. We were up 2-0 on them before they even knew what happened, and that gives us so much confidence.
“We had some good defense. There were a couple of times where we let girls through but that’s inevitable. Comparing this game to the Pennridge game, it’s an amazing, major improvement. It really feels like a different team. Even myself, I feel that I played so much better in this game than in the last game.
“This year we’re going to continue to keep working on our defense and our transitions, but overall we’re definitely doing a great job this year.”
The Panthers were back in action on Monday, dropping an SOL American contest to host Upper Dublin, 13-5.
Cameron Hagerty, Ciara Mory, Rosenberg, Stover and Katie Hagerty each scored a single tally for Quakertown.
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