Match 7: Centaurs roll to 1st win

It was a collective sigh of relief for the Woodstock Academy girls lacrosse team.

After failing to get a victory in its first six games, the Centaurs got into the win column with a 20-10 victory over Griswold at the Bentley Athletic Complex.

“We really needed this,” said junior forward Shannon Gagnon. “It was our first win of the season and we all played so well together. It feels really good.”

First-year head coach Mikayla Jones knew the season might not be as successful as when the Centaurs captured the Eastern Connecticut Conference tournament championship when they last played the sport in 2019.

A high school team can look mighty different over the course of two years.

Plus, the girls lacrosse teams is one of only three Woodstock Academy programs this spring (boys lacrosse and girls golf being the others) who are playing a largely similar schedule to the one played pre-pandemic against the larger Southeastern Connecticut schools.

Add to that the pandemic itself which has reduced the numbers out for athletic teams.

“I think a lot of kids aren’t playing this year due to Covid. If they are not fully in school, they can’t play. There are a lot of factors that are going against us,” Jones said. “We’re in Northern Connecticut, lacrosse isn’t too big up here, it’s hard to find feeder programs for us so a lot of times we have to start from scratch. That’s what we’ve done this year and I knew that coming in.”

Still, the win was needed just to lift the spirits a bit.

Jones felt like the team was in a bit of a mental funk after losing the first six matches.

“I keep telling them, remember, three of our four defenders are brand new this year. It’s a rebuilding year for us but I think this is a turning point. We’re connecting better as a team, passing much better in the middle, taking more shots and are just more confident than we were two weeks ago,” Jones added.

The Centaurs got the confidence boost early against the Wolverines.

Gagnon scored off a free position call just 1 minute, 31 seconds into the match.

Griswold tied the game four minutes later but the Centaurs followed with seven unanswered tallies.

Gagnon got three of her five goals in the rally.

“It was good to get that fast start. It really pumped up our energy and got us going,” Gagnon said.

The junior now has 11 goals on the season.

Rachel Canedy (seven goals this year) added two of her four goals against the Wolverines in the run.

Griswold called a time out when it fell behind the Centaurs, 8-1, with 13:29 left in the first half.

Jones warned her charges.

“I told them (in the time out) that they could not get complacent. I told them it’s 0-0, it’s always 0-0, it doesn’t matter what the score is. They are going to come back,” Jones said.

Griswold, playing without a substitute on its sideline, did just that.

The Wolverines scored the next five goals, four by Abigail Wing, and just 58 seconds left before the half, the Woodstock Academy lead was down to two.

Fortunately, Gagnon scored her fifth goal of the game with 42 seconds left in the half to give the Centaurs some of the momentum back going into the break.

“We needed a big start. I told them that somebody had to score early and score several times. We need it right in the beginning and we need to get into their heads and our heads need to be in the right spot,” Jones said.

The Centaurs came out of halftime with the same type of attack that they began the game with and scored the first three goals to regain a six-goal advantage.

Griswold never got closer than four the remainder of the way.

Gagnon had a highlight moment of her own late in the game when she passed to her older sister, Kileigh, for the last Centaurs goal of the match with 58 seconds to play.

“It was really good. She said it was her dream,” Shannon Gagnon said with a laugh of the sister-sister combo goal.