Long Beach vs. Wantagh Girls Analysis

On a windy May night, playoff bound teams Wantagh and Long Beach displayed a fierce match-up in Conference 1 varsity girl’s lacrosse. The game was named Wantagh’s “Senior Game”, but Long Beach walked away with the W, securing a 15-6 victory.

Both teams came out strong in the first half. The girls traded off goals as the game started with Lexie Correia scoring the first for Long Beach and Danielle Carson evening the score for Wantagh. Long Beach then scored three unanswered goals, delivered by senior Jillian Canner, Maggie Reznik, and Lexie Correia. However, the Warriors slowed the pace of play which allowed Jillian Balkunas to find the net for a big goal. Long Beach, answered quickly scoring twice more, one by sophmore Cate Miller and one by senior Fiona Rafferty. At halftime, the score was Long Beach 6, Wantagh 2. Wantagh displayed strength in controlling the draw throughout the first half of game, but the struggle was in taking care of the ball following the draw. Long Beach answered multiple draw losses with caused turnovers, and executing on the offensive end.

In the second half, Long Beach began by coming out on top right from the first draw, allowing them to score two goals at the start of the half by Correia and Reznick. Wantagh jumped in and responded with two goals from sophomore Jill Balkunas and junior Ryan Smith. Long Beach kept turning up the heat with another goal scored by Correia, followed by goals from Senior Hannah Lewis, Freshman Kiera Bauer and seniors Jill Canner, Fiona Rafferty, and Sophia Valentin.

The final score was 15-6, with Long Beach ending out on top. Wantagh put in a great effort, but the Long Beach offense came out firing in both halves, while their defense held strong, holding a very good Wantagh offense to only 6 goals. Long Beach should leave this game knowing they beat a quality team in Wantagh by a big margin which should boost their morale. They outplayed Wantagh in this game, and showed why they are playing good lacrosse this May. Leaving this game, Wantagh should consider this as a throw away game. The Long Beach goal scored with under a minute to play, should be the fuel Wantagh uses to make them come out of the gates stronger in the playoffs.

 

One Comment

  1. Cheryl says:

    Sounds like Long Beach was able to answer everything Wantaugh had. Well done both teams and all the best in the next round

Leave a Reply

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

icon-angle icon-bars icon-times