By Michael Wojtychiw
Lane’s girls lacrosse program has gotten its groove back.
The Champions dominated the early years of Public League girls lacrosse, but had seen Payton make a bit of a recent jump, with the Grizzlies winning two of the last four city championships.
Lane won the title last year with a dominant win over Taft, so it was looking for back-to-back titles when it took on Jones in the title game May 9 at Lane Stadium.
Standing in its way, however, was Jones, a team that hadn’t made it to a CPL championship game in its program history and its superstar Ariel Tvishor. The Jones senior broke the CPL career scoring record, set by Lane’s Gwen Ryan last season, by finishing her outstanding career with 238 career goals.
Unfortunately for her and for Jones, the Champions were just too good on championship day and came out on top, 11-7, to claim their eighty city title.
“This is amazing, we’ve worked so hard for this,” Lane’s Norah Rosenberg said. “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Jones is really good, but we kept our head in it, didn’t let anything get to us and doing it at home, in front of our fans, in this environment, it’s awesome.
“Winning the city is so important to us. It shows Illinois that we’re out there, ready to compete with the suburban teams. It puts us more on the map and let’s other schools know who we are.”
“Last year, we had a lot of great playmakers, this year this was a full team effort,” Lane coach Shelby Cosman said about the difference between last year’s team and this year’s team. “We had anyone we could put on that field to make a complete impact. The leadership from our returners was unreal, especially for a younger team.
“The grit of this team, the hustle of this team…they didn’t care who scored, they were such a family.”
Audrey Nathaus and Tvishor traded goals to start the game before Lane went on a 6-1 run over the last 20 minutes of the half.
Norah Rosenberg scored three goals in the run, while Olivia Walling, Amelia Hood and Sofie Miniscalco all added one apiece.
“At first, I was getting a lot of good looks,” Rosenberg said. “But in the second half, they started playing more up, so I had to look to pass more. That definitely got our offense going. Every part of our game was so good today.”
“We haven’t had a set starter group all season, but it never seemed to matter,” Cosman said about not having to rely on just one or two players to score and make plays. “As coaches, it’s fun because it let us challenge their lacrosse IQ and allowed us to work off of so many different skills and strengths.
After halftime, however, things started to level out for the Eagles.
They won four of the third quarter’s seven draws and equaled the Champions’ three goals in the quarter, to make the score 10-4 after three quarters.
Isla Hudecek scored all three goals for the Eagles, while Lane got contributions from two Rosenberg goals and a Hood goal.
But then things got interesting in the final quarter.
Lane’s Arden Gutierez scored a goal three minutes into the fourth for a seven-goal lead, but the Eagles weren’t done.
Tvishor cut it to 11-5 with seven minutes, 43 seconds remaining. Olivia Dorfman made it 11-6 two minutes later and Tvishor cut it to 11-7 with five minutes left, but the Champions would hold on for another city title.
“The draws killed us a bit, for sure,” Rosenberg said. “It took us a little to adjust after the half,. I think we got really excited with the big lead, but we had to work more cohesively as a defensive unit and by the end, we were able to do that.”
Photos by Alex Beryozkin, Northside junior
