Girls LAX out for a title

Spartans ready to go through any team to win it all this season.

Spartans ready to go through any team to win it all this season.

Every season the Bainbridge girls’ lacrosse team works hard to win a state title.

For seven straight seasons, they have made the state championship game.

Yet every season since 2006, the girls have lost to Lakeside in a rivalry that has become one of the best in girls’ lacrosse.

This season, head coach Tami Tommila and her team are ready to make it an eighth straight trip to the state title game.

Leading the pack of returners is senior midfielder Jaclyn Biggers.

An All-American and first team all-state selection, she led the team in goals with 61 and the league with a record 102 draw controls.

Biggers is recovering from surgery for a torn meniscus performed in February.

Tommila said Biggers is at 50 percent right now, but hopes to have her at full speed once the team returns from spring break.

Biggers, who is ranked in the Westside LAX Elite 25, said she will not let the injury mar her last season in a Spartan jersey.

“I can’t hurt it anymore than I already have,” she said. “It’s just regaining the cutting and getting back to 100 percent.”

Tommila said the team handled the loss of Biggers well during their jamboree last week.

Biggers said the girls did their best even with the poor weather affecting play.

“It was such a bad day because of the weather and half the juniors were at the SATs, but the team did really well,” she said. “We had most of our defense out there and they did really well.”

With the number of returners coming back, Tommila said they will be strong at every position.

Seniors Emma Entress and Hanna Knostman lead the line attack. Several players are ready to provide scoring or defensive support in the midfield, including Biggers, fellow senior Grace Deery-Schmitt and juniors Theo Fehsenfeld, Kelsey Mackin and Bea Sheffer.

Defensively, senior Abigail Love and junior Chase McMahon will accompany junior goalkeeper Madeline Stevenson, with senior Morgan Moniz, junior Olivia Smith and Deery-Schmitt able to slide either back into defense or up into the midfield.

Though many expect the title game to come down to the Spartans and the Lions once again, Biggers said they just want to win a state title no matter who they face.

“Whoever we play is irrelevant,” she said. “We just want to win.”