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By Mike Morton
Brooklyn Daily
The Poly Prep girls lacrosse team blew a big chance to move into a second place tie in the standings by losing Friday’s home game to the Fieldston Eagles, 14-10.
The Blue Devils found themselves in an early hole, trailing Fieldston by seven at halftime. Shots hitting the post, loose balls bouncing the wrong way, and an aggressive Fieldston defense contributed to the slow start, said Poly coach Anni Zukauskas.
Poly (7–4) bounced back in the second half, however, making the Eagles sweat. After the break, the Blue Devils went on a 5–1 scoring streak, cutting the Fieldston lead to five with less than ten minutes left.
Fieldston (10–2) scored the next goal, breaking Poly’s momentum, and closed out the game. It was the second time this season the Blue Devils have lost to Fieldston. The first loss was 16–15 in overtime.
“It was too little too late,” Poly coach Anni Zukauskas said. “The girls showed up in the second half. You can blame anyone and anything, but we lost it in the first half.”
Still Zukauskas was proud of her team’s effort in the second half.
“In this sport you can score three goals in a minute, and we’ve done it before,” she said. “It takes 10 seconds to score a goal, and they believed it. I think that’s the most important part of today. That they didn’t give up. That tells us a lot.”
Jane Tewksbury led the Blue Devils in scoring with four goals, including three in the second half. Brigid Regan scored three, to go along with two from Jania Walker Anderson and one from Annabel Newman.
It has not been an easy season for the girls lacrosse team. After routinely finishing at the top of the Ivy League the last few years, this season the Blue Devils have experienced problems as they try to break in a new team.
Much of Poly’s roster has been forced to learn new positions to make up for the offensive production lost with last year’s graduation of Sam Domurat and Jessica Dahldorf, who now plays at Northwestern, a women’s lacrosse powerhouse.
The team’s formerly strong defensive unit was moved to the midfield and attack positions to account for lack of scoring and depth. This has resulted in a thin defense and inexperienced offense. Zukauskas is satisfied with how far her team has come, however.
“I won’t be happy until we win a championship,” Zukauskas said. “But I’m pleased with the effort that they’ve put in to catch up and maintain who they are.”