The pace in the first half on Saturday’s girls lacrosse game between Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Churchill was dizzying. In 25 minutes, the teams combined for 20 goals, but to Barons coach Jenna Ries, that wasn’t the story. Instead, it was the missed opportunities her team had and its difficulty in putting the game away. It took a while, but B-CC finally managed to do that, outlasting the Bulldogs, 19-14, in Bethesda.
‘‘The challenge is always to get the girls to see their potential,” Ries said. ‘‘In the flow of the game, there were moments where we could change things, where an extra pass or catch would have controlled the game, but they are not totally there yet. But, they are almost ready to go.”
As ready as B-CC (4-3 overall record) may have been by the end of the game, at the start, it was a bit sluggish. Churchill jumped out to three quick scores and looked ready to roll to an easy win. Yet, that setback was nothing for the Barons, considering the start to their season. In the opener, they were trounced by Quince Orchard 12-2, and immediately afterwards did some soul-searching.
‘‘After the opener, we really talked about what we needed to do to get going,” senior midfielder Leslie Grill said. ‘‘We only had two starters coming back from last year, and we really had to learn how to play together. We had to bond.”
That bonding continued even as B-CC lost two of its next three games. Yet, a tight 5-4 win over Magruder on April 15 sparked something. The Barons scored 19 against Richard Montgomery in a win before Saturday’s game.
‘‘We needed that spark,” senior Mimmy Wentzel, who transferred to B-CC from Holton-Arms, said. ‘‘Now everyone is working together. Every game, we are getting scoring from more and more girls, and we are really gaining confidence.”
That was evident in the way that the Barons scored their goals. After Lauren Plotnick (three goals), Hannah Baron and Teryn Hann (four goals) opened the game with tallies for Churchill, Wentzel got the Barons on the board with a quick wrist shot off a feed from midfielder Catherine Mirsky. With the seal broken, the Barons took off. Wentzel scored three more goals, and Grill, Campbell Burr and Liza Amaling scored three each. Senior April Cahill, playing in her first game of the season, added some more scoring punch, scoring six goals to lead the team, including five in the second half.
‘‘We’re so different from that first game,” Grill said. ‘‘It was like we didn’t know the rules then. Now, the goal is the play as hard as you can every possession. It’s a little cliché, but is has become our motto.”
Churchill (4-3) may adopt the same motto after this game. The Bulldogs relinquished that early lead and fell behind by as many as four goals in the first half, before closing the gap with frenetic runs to the net. For a while the tactic worked, as Hann and Plotnick scored four goals each, and junior speedster Angela Biciocchi broke through with darting runs to lead the team with six goals. But the effort expended in closing the gap took its toll. B-CC goalie Kate Flaming slapped away some late shots, which frustrated the Bulldogs. After closing the gap to 14-13 with three minutes left, they were outscored five to one.
‘‘B-CC is a good team and they had good transitions,” Churchill junior-varsity coach Christen Pena-Ariet said. Pena-Ariet filled in for varsity coach Louisa Feve who was not at the game. ‘‘What we can take from this is that we need to play more aggressively. We need to compete for the 50-50 balls, for every ground ball. We are going to play to win.”
B-CC has the same plan in mind, with the caveat that it is not worried about the margin of victory so much as the improvement that each win brings. In Ries’ estimation, her team has the talent to contend for a regional title, if it can find a way to transcend the worry about their opponent and focus on itself.
‘‘We’re looking for 12 people to be checked into each other all the time,” Ries said. ‘‘It is pushing through the fatigue at the end of the game and getting it done. That is going to the next level.”
