In a hard-fought contest, the Rockbridge County High School girls lacrosse team overcame Powhatan 15-12 in the Class 4 state semifinals on Tuesday night in Lexington.
With the win, their 14th consecutive victory, the Wildcats (15-2) earned a return trip to the state championship game.
In a rematch of last year’s state title game, the Wildcats will face two-time defending state champion Western Albemarle (17-1) on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Charlottesville High School. In the other semifinal, Western Albemarle earned a 16-2 road win over Dominion. In last year’s state championship game, Western beat the Wildcats 12-8. This year, the teams faced off in their season opener on March 18, with Western winning 12-10 in Lexington.
On Tuesday night, the Wildcats jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first five minutes, with Lola Mulitalo scoring two of her game-high eight goals. Last year, Mulitalo had scored the game-tying and winning goal in RC’s 13-12 overtime win over Powhatan in the state quarterfinals.
This time, the Indians (17-1) got on the scoreboard when Emma Terry converted from the free position with 4:56 left in the first quarter, and Powhatan scored two more goals before the period ended to cut RC’s lead to 4-3.
Powhatan tied the game 4-4 just over two minutes into the second quarter, but Mulitalo scored on an assist from Josie Caldwell to start an 8-1 run that would put the Wildcats up 12-5 in the final two minutes of the half. Powhatan’s Erica Krauss scored two goals before intermission to cut RC’s lead to 12-7.
The Indians were successful in forcing turnovers in the third quarter and trimmed the Wildcats lead to 13-11 by the end of the period. However, Mulitalo scored on an assist from Anna Nye with 9:03 left in the game to give the Wildcats back the momentum, and Mulitalo scored RC’s final goal from the free position. A goal by Terry cut RC’s lead to 15-12 with just under five minutes to play, but the Wildcats maintained possession most of the rest of the way and milked the clock to pull out the win in front of their enthusiastic home fans.
Nye led RC with seven assists and scored two goals, while Caldwell added two goals and two assists, Emma Johnson had two goals and one assist. Chipping in one goal apiece were Ruby Goodhart and Emma McKnight.
Leading Powhatan with three goals each were Terry, Krauss and Blakely Dowdy, while Caroline Camp had two goals, and Eva Fridley scored once.
Senior goalie Alyssa Hunter made 10 saves for the Wildcats, and her defense helped the Wildcats stay ahead. Mackenzie Halfon made eight saves for the Indians.
Nye led RC with 14 draw controls, while Mulitalo had four. Nadia Gaydos paced the Wildcats with five ground balls. Nye led the defense with four caused turnovers, and Braeyln Polly had two caused turnovers.
For the full stories and photos from this week’s action, please see our June 18 newspaper. The stories and photos from the Wildcats’ regional championship and state quarterfinal wins will be in tomorrow's newspaper.
