By JIM WHITING
For the Review
Sarah Shea and Mariah Walk both scored five goals, and Jaclyn Biggers added four, as the BHS girls lacrosse team ran its record to 4-0 by defeating visiting Snohomish 15-4 on Wednesday evening at Memorial Stadium.
After playing four games in nine days, the team is idle for two weeks because of spring break.
The hiatus comes at an opportune time for the team, which was missing two key players – co-captains Rachel Harmon and Sally Baumgartner – due to illness.
Apparently a similar bug hampered Walk, whom Tommila said was at “about 60 percent. Usually she’s at full speed all the time. Sometimes tonight she was jogging.”
The team should face its stiffest test thus far when it hosts Holy Names on April 8.
After a slow start, the Cougars won two in a row just before the break.
“They have good players and are well-coached,” Tommila said. “It’s good to play stronger teams and be in that competitive mode.”
Though Lakeside – the league’s only other undefeated team and the Spartans’ particular nemesis, having defeated them in three straight state championship games – looms three weeks later, Tommila says that they’re not focusing on the Lions.
“We’re just looking at the next team on the schedule,” she said. “We’ll be ready when the time comes.”
Tommila didn’t feel the team was ready against Snohomish.
The Panthers, who went undefeated in the Varsity B league last year and moved up to Varsity A, may have felt they had something to prove.
“We didn’t have a lot of energy in the first half and Snohomish did,” she said. “They were a lot more aggressive than we were.”
That aggression was reflected in the Panthers’ four goals. Bainbridge had shut out one previous opponent and allowed a single goal in the other two.
Yet Tommila saw a particular positive on defense.
“I liked our hustle in back-checking, when we turned the ball over,” she said. “The girls worked hard to get the ball back. The defense is developing a good chemistry.”
After the Spartans narrowly missed a score in the game’s opening moments, Shea got the team on the scoreboard at the three-minute mark and Biggers scored two and a half minutes later.
After Snohomish narrowed the margin to 5-2 with six minutes remaining in the half, the Spartans scored three times in just over a minute to effectively put the game away.
Biggers had two goals in that span and Walk added the third. The half ended with Bainbridge up 9-3.
After the Spartans extended their lead to 11-3 on goals by Delaney Larkin and Shea in the first four minutes of the second half, the teams went scoreless for 10 minutes.
Shea snapped the scoring drought and Walk extended the margin to 13-3 a minute and a half later.
The pair each tallied their fifth goals in the game’s final minute.
At Curtis two days earlier, Bainbridge coasted to an 18-1 victory. Sydney Whitaker led the team with five goals, Walk and Shea both had three, while Emma Entress and Liana Olson chipped in with two apiece.
In their home opener last Thursday, the Spartans shut out Tacoma 20-0. The Tigers had defeated Holy Names 16-11 three days earlier.
Walk led the way with five scores, Baumgartner had four, Shea and Biggers had three apiece and Whitaker added two.
Bainbridge outshot Tacoma 28-4.
