The Verona Lady Hillbillies displayed an impressive show of force in their 17-7 win over Morris Knolls yesterday in Verona, dominating from start to finish in a collective effort that saw nine different Verona girls put their names in the offensive stat sheet for this contest.
Despite the great effort by the entire team, complete with outstanding defense and goaltending, the big story of the game was the return from injury of senior captain and attack Maggie Ashley, a D1 commit to Bucknell, who exploded for a game-high six goals, including the 100th of her high school career just as the buzzer sounded before halftime on a great feed from junior Emily Coppola. (This is #99 below.)
Maggie Ashley was out of lacrosse for a full year because of injury. She returned with a roar yesterday, scoring a game-high 6 goals, including the 100th of her high school career. @veronaglax pic.twitter.com/TFa5SF8ZoI
— MyVeronaNJ (@myveronanj) April 11, 2018
For Ashley, it has been a long road back after missing her entire junior season, and some games early this season, due to injury and yesterday’s standout performance was a powerful statement about her return to the Verona lineup and the kind of impact she can have on the Lady Hillbillies offense.
The Verona girls lacrosse team, now 4-1, seek to continue their winning momentum this Thursday, April 12, in a 4 p.m. home game at Verona High School.
The Verona team fed off of the energy of Ashley’s performance and performed at a high level throughout the game, scoring a season-high 17 goals while also holding Morris Knolls to under 10 goals thanks to great defensive play led by junior Lara Tole and sophomore Clara Frizzi and more great goaltending from sophomore Skyler Freedman who recorded eight saves and her fourth game of holding the opponent under ten goals in this young season.
Junior Allie Madigan put Verona out front 1-0, at the 17:00 minute mark before Knolls responded with the next two goals. Junior defender Erin Kiernan would even things up with a goal from an eight meter shot after a sprint upfield and Verona never looked back from that point, scoring the next four goals, three from Ashley and one from junior Sarah Carlucci who recorded her second hat trick of the season in this game, which put Verona in a 6-2 lead at halftime.
After a Morris Knolls goal to start the second half, Verona responded with another goal from Ashley and then a follow up score from senior Ashley Nigro that resulted from an interception and run upfield by Tole to push Verona’s lead to 8-3. Then junior Julia Mackey would break through for her second goal of the season followed by a goal from sophomore Maggie Lonsinger and Ashley’s fifth of the game to expand the Verona lead to 12-5 at the 7:00 minute mark of the second half.
At this point, Morris Knolls began a mini-rally scoring the next two goals to close the Verona lead to 12-7 with under five minutes to play, sparking hopes of a late game comeback from the visitors, but it was not to be. Senior captain and midfielder Cecilia “CC” Courter, who to that point had played a strong defensive game, including three stick check forced turnovers, but was very quiet offensively, conducted a scoring outburst, aided by four consecutive draw controls from Maggie Lonsinger, that saw her score three goals and two assists in under three minutes to close the door on any hopes of a Morris Knolls comeback, increasing the Verona lead to 17-7, which would end up as the final score.
