By Michael Wojtychiw
Lane Tech has been the gold standard in girls lacrosse in the history of the Chicago Public League. Up until last year’s Payton upset of Lane in the city title game, the Champions had not dropped a game to a city team since the city started playing the sport of lacrosse.
With that in mind, the Champions were hoping to get back at the Grizzlies when the two teams met for the city championship May 15 at Lane Stadium.
Payton and Lane had met just two weeks prior when Lane took down Payton 17-15.
The championship game was much different, however.
The Champions got out to a quick 5-0 and 6-1 start en route to a 15-6 win, securing their seventh city title in dominant fashion.
“That game last year hasn’t left our minds,” Lane’s Kate McNamara said. “We think about it every practice, every game. I’ve thought about it since last season. Nobody wants to feel that way and after seeing the guys lose Friday, it lit an even bigger fire in us.”
“This is a new team, a new year,” Lane coach Amanda Malstrom said. “When we played them earlier in the year we played them tight and this time we came out and put it all out there.”
And they did it by winning the draw. Lane won six of the first seven draws, with goals resulting in five of those possessions. The Grizzlies didn’t possess the ball on four of those five.
Lane did it by spreading the goals out as well as six different players scored the team’s first seven goals of the game.
“Getting that momentum right off the bat sets the attitude for all of our players because it’s forward motion at that point, there’s nothing to head back from,” McNamara said. “We carried it throughout, we didn’t settle at all.”
“In the week leading up to the game, we spent a lot of time on the draw, trying to mirror their centers and how they typically played on the draw to see how we can adjust and have it be more beneficial for us,” Malstrom said.
It didn’t matter what Payton tried to do either in the draw circle or the defensive zone, Lane was able to do almost what it wanted, constantly getting multiple shots off per possession, building up its lead to 9-2 at the half and then 14-4 halfway through the second half.
“Pressuring the ball and communication are really things we’ve been working on,” McNamara, who ends her career as a two-time champion, said. “We just never lost sight of what was going on.”
Ally Vanna led the way for the Champions with three goals, while Gwen Ryan, Kendra O’Keefe, Olivia Ruby, Katie Wilk and Abby Kenen all added two. Gabriella Scholtes led the Grizzlies with four goals, while Gabriela Conforti added the other two.
The two teams met again a week later in the state playoffs, with the Champions coming out on top again, this time by a score of 17-11. Lane’s season would come to an unfortunate end in the sectional final, when it fell to Evanston 14-7.
