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Sports

Ward Melville Girls Lax Tops Smithtown West, Advances to Quarterfinals

The Patriots jumped out to an 8-0 lead and led 13-2 at the end of the first half on the way to a 19-8 first-round playoff victory.

The Ward Melville girls lacrosse team used a dominating first half to defeat Smithtown West, 19-8, Friday afternoon in the first round of the Suffolk County Class A playoffs.

“We moved the ball nicely offensively, draw controls were huge for us today,” Patriots head coach Kerri Kilkenny said. “Defensively, we hung in and played well as a team. We’ve been focused to play as a team and to play the whole 50 minutes.”

Jess Liberty and Ally Tilley each scored four goals for Ward Melville, and Emily Rogers-Healion added three to go along with two assists.

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“She’s always all over the field, back and forth, hustling with feisty aggressive defense and finishing on attack,” Kilkenny said.

Smithtown West had the first good scoring chance of the game after Kristen Viscount fired a shot off the crossbar less than three minutes into the game. Viscount did all she could to carry her team, scoring four goals. Nikki Heldberg added two goals and an assist.

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Rogers-Healion opened the scoring for Ward Melville less than a minute later. She scored again three minutes afterward to make it 2-0 and ignite the onslaught. With 9:45 left in the first half, Ward Melville had built an 8-0 advantage.

“This was a tough one to lose,” Bulls assistant coach Peter Klement said. “They just beat us on groundballs and in transition and that hurt us.”

Viscount put her team on the board with 7:55 left in the first half, but less than 30 seconds later, Tilley scored again for Ward Melville.

The teams played evenly in the second half with each side scoring six goals, but the Bulls was never really able to recover from the one-sided first half.

Smithtown is only losing three seniors to graduation and Klement is bullish about the team’s future, even if this year had its ups and downs.

“They’re a big part of the team,” he said of the seniors. “We’ll be young, but we’ll be all right. I think we’ll be very good, trying to fight our way back into it.”

Ward Melville, which entered the game on a four-game win streak, moves on to play William Floyd on the road next Tuesday. The Patriots defeated Floyd, 11-7, when the two sides squared off earlier this season.

“Floyd is going to be a much more intense match than we saw today,” Kilkenny said. “We have played them before and beat them earlier, but they’re going to want to come back with some revenge on us, certainly in the playoffs when it counts the most, but I think we’re going to be ready and focused. We’ve been on such an upswing lately, so I think if we continue like this it’s definitely going to be a challenge, but I think we’ll be able to handle them.”

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