Following another impressive showing in the regular season, the Rye girls lacrosse team can’t control who they face in the playoffs or those respective teams’ records. All they do is win face-offs, pounce on ground balls, and try with all their might to bury goals in the back of the net.
With a 10-7 victory Friday over Suffern, the No. 1-ranked team in Section 1 Class A, the Garnets enter the postseason with eight straight wins. During that stretch of dominant team lacrosse, Rye has outscored its opponents by an average score of 15-5.
But these Garnets believe there is something they can control: a return to the New York state championship game.
“When we lost to Sayville in the state championship last year, it wasn’t a good feeling,” said Rye senior captain Caroline Doyle. “The next morning after we got home from that game, a bunch of us met out on the Rye turf and we ran a full practice by ourselves. Getting back to that championship game has been on our minds for 12 months.”
Before winning at Suffern, the Rye girls won five games in a row by double digits, beating Bronxville 15-5 on May 2, Nassau County’s Port Washington 17-4 on May 5, Scarsdale 14-1 on May 8, Bethlehem Central (Penn.) 16-3 on May 10, and Mamaroneck 18-3 on Wednesday. Each game was mostly decided by the start of the fourth quarter. How have Coach Michelle Mason and her staff kept their players focused throughout this impressive run of mostly lopsided victories?
“We tell our kids to be present in the moment, to be here now,” Mason said following the Mamaroneck game. “The more we play together as a team, the harder we become for our opponents to prepare for and defend in the postseason. Like we said on Senior Night, our seniors have set the standard of excellence for our younger players all year long. I’m blown away by how hard they work every day.”
Those seniors include: prolific goal-scorer Doyle, goal-blocking machine Catherine Ebeling, multi-tool threat Mary Sack, master-defender Cami Brooks, ambidextrous Taylor Bainbridge, speedster Kathleen Denvir, and crafty Lucy Wyckoff.
Now, with playoff momentum swirling throughout their roster – thanks to one of the toughest regular-season schedules in all of Westchester – these Garnets are surging into the postseason.
