St. Ed’s varsity girls lacrosse team looks to regroup after dropping two straight heartbreakers and settling for a 2-3 record before taking time off this week for spring break. The Pirates resume action next Wednesday with a match at home against American Heritage.
The record could easily be 4-1 if this extremely young team avoided the wild swings of inconsistency that led to a 10-9 defeat at Cardinal Newman High and an equally gut-wrenching 13-11 overtime loss to South Fork High at Pirate Stadium during the last week in February.
The season opened with a crosstown trip to face off against the Vero Beach High junior varsity squad, and the outcome was pretty much the same as it has been in past years against the VBHS varsity. The Pirates were “handled pretty well,” according to Head Coach Don Balch and fell by a score of 12-4.
VBHS has a powerful, nationally recognized varsity girls lacrosse program with nine consecutive state championships and counting. St. Ed’s was stuck in a two-team district with VBHS and 2015 was the right time to break away from that deflating rut.
“We decided to go independent,” Balch explained. “A good reason was because we are so young. We were in a two-team district with the largest public school that plays lacrosse. We are one of the smallest private schools to play lacrosse. The games against Vero weren’t going to be very competitive.
“We’re looking to see how this shakes out down the road. We are trying to see what the options are for smaller schools. As things evolve on the club scene, the large public schools are certainly rising to the top. This (new status) will be a little different atmosphere and experience for the girls.”
Meanwhile, if the label “young” ever applied to a high school varsity sports team, these Pirates would top that list. The roster is a bit unusual to say the least.
“We have no seniors this season,” Balch said. “I don’t know if it was collectively or individually, but they decided it just wasn’t happening this year. The seniors that we had coming into the season are all very busy with other activities and lacrosse was just an add-on and not really their main focus.”
That left Balch with a truncated but feisty group of 16, including five eighth graders. After the opener with Vero, the kiddie corps reeled off two nice wins before inexperience may have contributed to their downfall in those two narrow setbacks.
St. Ed’s defeated John Carroll 18-10 and followed that up with a 13-7 victory over Pine School. Just about everything seemed to be clicking again when the girls grabbed a seemingly comfortable halftime lead against Cardinal Newman.
“We had a nice 8-3 cushion and things that we had run in practice were working,” Balch recalled. “So we stayed with that coming out in the second half and everything changed. We won draw controls 7-5 in the first half but they beat us 11-1 in the second half. We just weren’t getting it. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and we were not able to match their speed in the second half.”
The Pirates were outscored 7-1 the rest of the way. Balch felt that some coaching adjustments may have softened the onslaught, but he also attributed the collapse in part to the vagaries of youth and inexperience.
A reverse scenario played out the next time. South Fork raced to quick 6-0 and 7-1 leads before the Pirates evened the score 7-7 at halftime. The game eventually went into overtime before South Fork prevailed 13-11.
The obvious takeaway from the first half of the season is that this team has the talent to compete with most comers.
“They are playing like a team,” Balch said. “We have nobody with an ego, and being so young I think the girls listen a little more. We have good solid players and they are working well together.”
Juniors Meg Bespolka, Grace Kahle and Autumn Meadows are the elders expected to be guideposts in terms of leadership and role models on the field.
Bespolka didn’t realize that her 16 goals lead the team. She may be excused for the oversight for she and her family recently moved to the New World.
Yes it’s been exciting, but obviously it’s all a team effort,” Bespolka said. “It’s really about everyone. I wouldn’t be there without the other girls.”
She also wouldn’t be in the U.S. if her family hadn’t relocated from London, England. Meg enrolled at St. Ed’s in January. “My dad is American so he wanted to come back here. I played lacrosse for seven years in England and I’m really glad that I’m getting to play here. Everyone has been so kind. It’s been very easy to fit in.”
Kahle has been a Pirate since kindergarten. “I was mostly on the bench the past two years because we had a lot more players.” she said. “Since our seniors dropped out we have three juniors as captains and we are taking responsibility. Coach moved me to defense and I’m finding some success there. We have strong players with a lot of potential. We need to work on getting them comfortable out on the field.”
Meadows’ nine goals place her second behind Bespolka in the scoring column. Eighth grader Christina Marad is third with eight.
“I play attack, usually low attack,” Meadows said. “We look to assist and pass the ball around, but if we have an opening, we shoot. This year we simply want to grow a good team. We are trying to teach the younger girls how to play as a team, but we would also like to win the majority of our games.”
