Spencerport’s girls’ lacrosse team was making their first trip to the Section V finals in program history as the top seed, but two rallies from four and seven goal deficits fell short in an 18-12 loss to Victor.
The Rangers opened the scoring at 2:02 of the first half when Lindsey Coffey cut to the net where Maliah Benedetto found her with a perfect pass.
That lead—their only one of the game—proved to be short-lived as Victor scored a little over one minute later to tie the game 1-1 and dominated the draws to score five unanswered to take a 5-1 advantage.
Victor won 17 of 20 draws in the first half.
Camryn Sack took a pass from Sara Roman and deked around a defender and ended the Victor run with a goal at 9:24 before Benedetto followed with an unassisted tally. After a Blue Devils goal, Sack found Erin Coykendall, whose underhand shot found the net to cut the Victor lead to 6-4.
But the Blue Devils scored five consecutive goals to build their lead back to 11-4.
The Rangers were resilient scoring three of the final four goals of the first half as Natalie Choate, Emily Coykendall and Sack tallied to cut the Blue Devils halftime lead to 12-7.
Benedetto opened the second half with an unassisted goal from the side of the net for the Rangers followed by a perfect give-and-go by the Coykendalls and, after a Victor goal, a shot by Sack dribbled just across the goal-line to cut the Blue Devils lead to 13-10.
But three straight tallies by Victor extended the lead back to six goals and they played keep-away for much of the rest of the contest. Erin Coykendall did manage two late goals on a free possession and converting a turnover.
“Our seniors worked hard and they have started something special here at Spencerport,” head coach Patricia Condon said. “Spencerport (who started five freshmen, two sophomores and two juniors among the 12) will be a team to be reckoned with—we’re going to be back.
“Victor is an athletic team, fast and likes to run and gun and we haven’t seen much of that this season. But divisional realignment next season will mean we are more prepared and will see every team before the playoffs.”
Named to the Section V All-Tournament Team for the Rangers were Sack, Erin and Emily Coykendall, Olivia Wall and goaltender Olivia Schroeder.
