Things are coming together for EG girls lacrosse and Monday, the timing couldn't have been better

PROVIDENCE — It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see the East Greenwich girls lacrosse team struggle the way they did to start the season. This spring’s roster is filled with new players and with a new coach on the sidelines, seeing the Avengers run into the problems they did shouldn’t have been a shock.

And neither should the midseason turnaround.

Things have finally come together for East Greenwich, with each win being more impressive than its last. Monday’s was the most impressive. The Avengers hung tough with second place La Salle before its offense awoke late in the third quarter and in the final seconds of the fourth, fresh face Ava Halvorsen came through with the game-winning goal and put it one on as the buzzer sounded, an exclamation point on their 8-6 win over the Rams.

“We’re definitely really excited,” Halvorsen said after her game-winning goal. “We’ve been working really hard together as a team all season. Everyone has been putting in the work going 100 percent at practice all the time. I really think we just wanted it today.”

“We’re feeling great,” EG senior captain Lexie Kavanagh said. “Our whole team is just really happy and we’ve worked hard to get here."

The win doesn’t allow East Greenwich to supplant La Salle in the race for the No. 2 seed in the Division I playoffs, but it certainly improves its chances. Considering their start to the season, itt’s hard to believe the Avengers have actually put themselves in this position.

EG made the state title game last spring with a roster loaded with senior talent. There were a lot of new faces on the field when the team started practicing this spring, included that of head coach Haley McCusker, who left an East Providence program she turned around for EG shortly before the season started.

Last year’s team had chemistry, something that took some time for this year’s team to build. East Greenwich lost its first three games of the season and after snapping that streak with a win over Prout, lost to Moses Brown.

The Avengers haven’t lost since, beating South Kingstown, Barrington, Lincoln School, Portsmouth and now La Salle in the last two weeks.

“We have a really young team so it just took us a little bit to get in the groove of things, especially since we have a lot of freshmen,” Kavanagh said. “They’re all really talented individuals, so all it took was us becoming a team.”

“We’ve just dialed it in,” Halvorsen said. “We’ve focused on some of the mistakes we’ve made in some of our other games and really just wanted to do better this time.

“… It was just an adjustment period. We all bonded together really well and worked together.”

East Greenwich’s young stars stepped up huge on Monday. Freshmen scored half of the teams goals, with sophomores accounting for two others.

Catherine Sprague, a junior, scored two huge goals in an 18-second span that tied the game at four with 2:37 left in the third quarter. The goals gave the offense confidence and freshman Lindsey Ziady put EG ahead 5-4 heading to the fourth after scoring with 1:34 left in the third quarter.

But the biggest goals of the game came in the final 24 seconds.

Tied at 6, Halvorsen drew a shooting space penalty and converted from the free position to take the lead. Fellow freshman Mia Berte made sure the lead stuck, winning the draw and Halvorsen added the final tally as the final horn sounded.

“We had less than a minute left and we wanted to get it in the back of the net. It just happened that when I went in, I got a shooting space call,” Halvorsen said. “I was really scared when it was the penalty shot because I hit the goalie earlier with one of them and I was like ‘I can’t let that happen again. I just have to get it in the back of the net for my team.’”

“They’re doing great,” said Kavanagh of the contribution the Avengers have had from the underclassmen. “They’re really talented and can easily keep up. They’re 14-year olds playing against 18-year olds and I think they’re doing really well.”

The offense stole the show at the end, but EG’s defense was the story of the first three quarters – even if it didn’t start great.

La Salle scored 19 seconds into the game, but the Avengers settled in after that. The Rams led 2-0 after the first, but EG’s defense forced La Salle to slow its pace with a zone that’s taken some time to come together the way it has of late.

The Rams led 3-2 at halftime, but after Maddi Goodwin’s goal with 8:15 left in the third, EG didn’t allow another score for 11:11.

“We switched to a zone D and I, personally, love it,” Kavanagh said. “The one thing that’s hard to do is keep up with cutters, but its easy to maintain all the girls on the field.”

La Salle was frustrated with the outcome, which snapped a five-game win streak and put the Rams at 8-3 on the season.

“This game was a really off-game for us and all of us agreed that we didn’t play our best,” La Salle senior Syndey Raynes said. “Honestly, on the field it didn’t feel like we were playing as a team. We were all playing as individuals and I feel like we felt that on the defensive end and offensive end.”

The Rams can’t dwell on Monday’s loss. La Salle needs to finish strong to secure the No. 2 seed, but ends the season with three playoff teams – including Thursday’s game against defending state champ Moses Brown. The Quakers have dominated everyone this spring – including an 18-5 win over La Salle back on April 16 – so a strong showing might be enough to give the Rams some confidence as it closes the regular season.

“We’re going in with that mentality of we have nothing to lose and they have everything to lose,” Raynes said. “We can play our hardest, 110 percent, and if we don’t come out on top we’re not supposed to come out on top.

“When we’re playing like that we’re playing loose, controlled and relaxed and things go a lot better for us.”

East Greenwich is back to playing the type of fearless lacrosse that got it to the state title game last spring. Can the Avengers do it again?

With the way they’ve played in the second half of the season, the answer is obvious.

“We can’t let the wins get to our heads,” Halvorsen said. “We have to keep playing like we have something to prove because I definitely think we can make it to the championship and have a chance of winning. We just can’t ease up.”

“We’re just going to keep working hard,” Kavanagh said. “A win’s a win, but we’re going to keep going.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: East Greenwich takes down La Salle in Division I girls lacrosse Monday