Bishop Guertin girls lacrosse opens regular season with win over Londonderry (video)

NASHUA - The Bishop Guertin High School girls lacrosse team showed what it can do when its playing close to its best in the first seven minutes of Monday's game against Londonderry.

The Cardinals also showed what happens when they get away from the things that allow them to play at that level.

Bishop Guertin jumped out to a 5-0 lead early in the regular-season opener for both teams, but hit a lull for the rest of the first half before cruising in the second on the way to a 15-1 win over the Lancers in a Division I game at Stellos Stadium.

Nat Coutu had three goals and two assists to lead Bishop Guertin (1-0) while Steph Reap and Rylee Bouvier had three goals apiece and Katie Campel had three assists. One of those came on a goal by Anna Campel, her sister, who finished with two goals while Tess Prunier (assist), Lauren Redfern, Arianna Kouchalakos and Abbey Dicomes had a goal apiece.

But despite the offensive output, the Cardinals felt like they left a little bit out there in the first half.

"The momentum was coming our way, which was a good start," Coutu said. "It was a good beginning to lead into the rest of the game. We’re all getting used to working together. Some of us have been working together since we were in third grade, but some of us just joined the team. We’re learning the chemistry and how we work together, that’s really important and that will come with time, too."

After taking a five-goal lead with just over 18 minutes remaining in the first half, Bishop Guertin scored just twice to take a 7-1 lead into halftime.

"It was a whole lot of pipes and a whole lot of not getting groundballs," Bishop Guertin coach Leslie Why said. "They (Londonderry) are always scrappy, they’re always competitive, they’re always on the groundball.

"I think I wanted them to run a few things that they weren’t ready to settle down and run, so I just kind of let them run how they wanted to run. Then I asked them to do some things and we started running two middie lines and it freed some people up, too."

Tara Wright had the lone goal for Londonderry (0-1), as she scored off an assist from Meg Daileanes to make it 5-1 with 10:56 left in the first half .Jayden Sherwood finished with 10 saves for the Lancers as the Cardinals had a 41-7 edge in shot attempts.

Makenna Reekie had two saves for Bishop Guertin in the first half and Maddy Eder-Linell played the second half and had four.

"This preseason, we’ve really been working with the middies and the defense on our plays," Bishop Guertin senior defender Delaney Ramalho said. "We have a ton of plays. Our goal this year as a defense is to be aggressive and we want to be known as that team that works really hard. We love to pressure the ball, so I think that was our mentality as a defense. We want no shots, no goals, and we really worked hard."

The Cardinals also won 14 of 18 draw controls and had an edge in turnovers, 22-16.

"We got a lot of people their first goals, we got a lot of people minutes who haven’t seen a lot of minutes," Why said. "I like the way we ended and I like the way we started. The whole groundball situation I didn’t like at all.

"The draws, I liked that and that’s a big focus area for us, as are groundballs and our eight-meters, too. We didn’t have a lot of eight-meters. I think they were kind of sagging in to a zone, so we should have had more opportunities for shooting space calls."

Bishop Guertin plays its next three games on the road, as the Cardinals head to Chelmsford (Mass.) on Thursday and then face Central Catholic (Lawrence, Mass.) on April 18 before returning to division play at Souhegan on April 22. Londonderry will host Merrimack on Friday.