MARBLEHEAD — The Marlehead girls lacrosse team rallied with late goals at the end of the first half and the second half on Thursday, but in the end it simply wasn’t enough in a 12-7 loss to Northeastern Conference foe Danvers at Piper Field.
“We have a lot of individually skilled players, but we’re not playing fully as a team yet,” said Marblehead coach Annie Madden. “We’re going to continue to work on that as a group as well as work on our transition defense and our passing. We just didn’t do enough out there (Thursday).”
Junior Gigi Lombardi led the Marblehead attack with three goals, while senior Maddie Erskine added two goals and one assist. Senior Fehr Gillett and junior Hadley Wales each added one goal, while senior Abby Kalinowski and sophomore Sydney Langton each had one assist.
One of the biggest bright spots in the loss was the play of senior goalie Elizabeth Driscoll, who finished the night with 13 saves.
“Elizabeth is outstanding and she’s a great leader for our defense out there,” said Madden. “She’s our rock back there and we lean on her heavily, so now hopefully we can help her out with some scoring on the other end.”
It was a low-scoring affair to start things off, with Danvers getting on the board first behind a goal from Ashley Curucu (four goals) two minutes into the game. Marblehead responded just over a minute later with a goal from Lombardi, but then Danvers rattled off three unanswered goals over the next 10 minutes to take a 4-1 lead midway through the second quarter.
But the Magicians kept battling back, and Erskine scored two times in the final 1:32 of the half to cut the deficit to just one goal, 4-3, at the halftime break.
Danvers came out strong to start the second half, scoring three goals in the first three minutes to jump out 7-3. Lombardi got one back for the Magicians with just under five minutes to go in the third, but the Falcons went on to close the quarter with three straight goals to take a commanding 10-4 lead.
But again, Marblehead kept fighting. Lombardi scored her hat-trick goal a little more than a minute into the fourth quarter, then Wales and Gillett both scored in the final five minutes of the game to put the Magicians back in it. Unfortunately, Danvers put the nail in the coffin thanks to two goals from Curucu in the final five minutes to seal the win for the Falcons.
Marblehead (2-2) hosts Peabody under the lights at Piper Field Saturday night (7).
“Peabody is a talented, athletic team and they always give us a great game, no matter what,” said Madden. “So we’re going to hit it hard in practice (Friday) and then come out and see what we can produce on Saturday.”
