“When we’re good, we’re really good.” 

When asking sophomore Haylie Gagnon about her feelings on the Pentucket girls lacrosse team, she emphasized her want for the team to go deep into the state tournament. She is a starter on the team and seems to have a lot of confidence and hope for the end of this year’s season. 

This season’s Pentucket Varsity Girls Lacrosse team looked promising from the beginning. Looking at the team’s roster, with its many experienced seniors and rising underclassmen, it looked like the team to beat. 

The team is host to 8 seniors, over half of which are committed to play the sport in college. These colleges include Hobart and William Smith, Endicott, UTampa, Saint Anselm’s, and Duke University. With this year’s insane amount of talent on the team, they look like they could make an impressive run in the playoffs.

Successes:

This year’s team has had its fair share of successes and anomalies. First was beating Newburyport 12-9 in April of this year’s season. Not only did the team win at home, but the game was controlled by Pentucket all the way through. Beating Port this year was the first time girls’ Pentucket Lacrosse has beaten Newburyport’s Varsity team in 10 years!

Another recent win for the team came last week when they played Manchester Essex. The Manchester Essex team is host to many experienced players, and they are backed by a goalie committed to play at UNC.  

Personally, I deem this more of a success than a loss, but Pentucket lost to the reigning D1 State Championship team, Central Catholic, yet again this year. However, Pentucket was winning with under one minute left, and ended up losing by 1 in a sudden death overtime. To put this in perspective, the team lost to Central by upwards of 13 goals last year… Seeing how much the team has grown, even through a tough loss, is something that says a lot about the players and coaches who made that happen. 

Failures:

However, the team has also faced many struggles throughout this season. So far, they have a 13-5 record, and they have lost some very winnable games. Their most recent loss was to Masconomet, in which they were scored on with under a minute left. However, that isn’t the first time they have lost in the final moments of a game. 

They lost to a very highly ranked team in their division, Ipswich. Pentucket’s other losses have been nothing crazy, but they sadly lost to Ipswich by 5 goals. With the athletes and host of talent on the team, losses at all should be rare, and it was slightly odd to see that they lost by 5, even if it was to a very good team. 

In an early season game against Burlington, they lost 7-8, with the deciding goals happening at the end of the 4th quarter. At this point in the season, the team was definitely still finding its footing, but the game was clearly winnable, and showed that the team wasn’t perfect, and would need to work hard and harness its full potential at every game. 

Now, beating Newburyport at home definitely evoked some strong positive emotions from the team, but little evokes more negative feelings than Pentucket losing to Newburyport at the Newburyport High School stadium. It seems that the team came into the game slightly complacent, which is normal when you have beaten a team you previously deemed unbeatable, but Pentucket was fighting to stay in the game the entire first half, and losing two players to yellow cards did not help their cause. They also ended up losing a starter from the lineup due to an injury, which was a big mental and physical blow to the whole team. The team lost by 4, and the loss was important in showing how dynamics can change from being underdogs to trying to stay at the front of the pack.

One of the team’s strengths is that it has very strong offensive scorers. Multiple girls on the team consistently have games in which they score very high numbers of goals. Ipswich clearly put Pentucket off their pedestal, but if given the chance to play them again, a different outcome is entirely possible. 

The team has had its ups and downs this season, but what’s important to note is that, as Haylie Gagnon said, when they are good, they are really good. If the team steps up for the next couple of weeks, it is entirely possible that they will make a serious run in the state tournament. 

Speaking of redemption, the girls’ team is set to play Hamilton-Wenham this week. In last year’s playoff game, Hamilton-Wenham beat Pentucket at home to kick them out of the playoffs after Pentucket had already beaten them in a last-second win earlier in the season. They showed no mercy, and will for sure come into this year’s game with the same mindset. However, as we can see, this Pentucket team is not the same as it was last year, and it is the belief of many that they can make it as far as they want.