Girls Lacrosse: Panthers headed to sectional final
BRIDGEWATER - They say practice makes perfect, but for the Bridgewater-Raritan High School girls lacrosse team, perfection goes well beyond the practice field.
The perfection mentality begins the moment the Panthers step out of the locker room and onto the field, in sync with one another, and even stems from the smallest of details like aligning the team's backpacks in a perfect line, all facing the same way along the bench.
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That attention to detail by the second-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan squad has allowed it to remain perfect on the season as it improved to 21-0 with a win against No. 3 Hunterdon Central (18-2) to advance to the NJSIAA North Group IV Tournament final on Thursday.
Junior goalie Arielle Weisman recorded her 500th career save for the Panthers as they beat the Red Devils 18-7 and earned a chance to play for the sectional championship against top-seeded Ridgewood.
“You know it's definitely exciting, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without the team I have in front of me on the field. The defense is phenomenal,” Weisman said. “To get such a high (number) save like that in my career was definitely a rewarding feeling in our last home game this season.”
Weisman racked up 10 saves on Thursday, but it was the Panthers' offense that continued to dominate as they scored the first seven goals of the semifinal match.
Junior Ally Mastroianni saw the back of the net five times as she continued her remarkable season, having scored over 70 goals so far this year. The University of North Carolina commit got the team rolling immediately as she scored the first goal with 23:59 remaining in the first half, and Bridgewater-Raritan never looked back.
Junior Kirsten Murphy added to the win with four goals while Addison Reilly, Tai Jankowski and Julia Lytle each contributed with two goals apiece.
The camaraderie on offense that Bridgewater-Raritan displays every time it takes the field is one of the main reasons opposing teams haven’t found a way to beat it this year.
“I think they just have so many solid players all over the field, they don’t have a weak spot; that allows them to move the ball very well,” Hunterdon Central coach Jillian Nealon said. “They are very confident, and they work together as a team and don’t let down from the starting whistle to the end.”
The third-year head coach is proud of what the Red Devils accomplished this year but thought they did not play up to their potential on Thursday. Hunterdon Central was looking to avenge the 16-11 loss it suffered against Bridgewater-Raritan earlier in the season.
Next week, it will be the undefeated Panthers who will be looking to avenge a loss, as Ridgewood ended their season last year in the Group IV final, 14-7.
“I think that our team has the potential to go all the way. Ridgewood is a phenomenal team, but we’re going to work hard and see what happens,” Bridgewater-Raritan coach Alyssa Frazier said.
Despite Bridgewater-Raritan’s unblemished schedule, Ridgewood earned the top seed for the tournament with a 16-2 record. One of Bridgewater-Raritan’s goals set at the beginning of the season was to get back to the group final and win it, and to do so without a single loss would be a great accomplishment in the school’s rich lacrosse history.
“It’d be unreal. We set our mind to having this goal accomplished since we were in sixth grade and watched our siblings and our friends do it, so it’s definitely something we have been striving for all of these years," Weisman said. "It would definitely be a great win against a team as phenomenal as Ridgewood."
