Close-knit Nashua South girls lacrosse was hoping to have one more run together

Sarah Signorello started playing lacrosse in fourth grade, and for every season since then, she's played alongside the same group of girls, all of whom are seniors at Nashua High School South.

It started with the Nashua Blast youth program, and then on to club teams with MaxLax and Granite State Elite, before, finally, joining the high school team.

But not only did that group remain together on so many different teams, they also had the same coach.

"We all started playing together with the Nashua Blast and coach (Ciki) McIntire has been our coach for all of those years," Signorello said. "We all knew what to expect and what every day was going to be like.

"The seniors we had this year had been playing together since we stared playing lacrosse. We had good chemistry. We would have conquered some teams that we weren't used to beating."

That group also included seniors Bailey Morin, Olivia Kingston and Maddie Rowe, who were all returning on defense, along with goalie Rileigh Bunton; middies Signorello and Emily Colburn; and Kirsten McIntire, the coach's daughter, on attack, who is the first South girls lacrosse player to commit to play at the Division I level in over a decade.

"I felt that we were definitely capable of having a good season," Kirsten McIntire said. "We had good returning players and this was probably the most active the offseason had been."

For Ciki McIntire, not only had she coached this class for a long time, the seniors have also been a big part of turning around the South program over the last five years. After the Panthers won five games in McIntire's first year as head coach, they had made the playoffs in three-straight seasons, including winning 11 games a year ago.

"I've had them since their youth sports and they've come up the ranks with me," McIntire said. "I think the group this year was very tight-knit, very close with the underclassmen as well. The chemistry they have together was going to lead them to great places."

Four of the seniors will be going on to continue playing in college, with Kirsten McIntire headed to Merrimack College. Bunton is headed to Southern Connecticut State, Colburn will play at Framingham State and Rowe is going to West Virginia Wesleyan.

"I definitely feel a little relieved that I'll get to continue my lacrosse career in college," Bunton said. "My teammates in college, we've already been talking. I'm very happy I have four more years, but it's really upsetting for the ones who don't have that."

While Signorello, who plans to head to West Virginia University, thinks she might try to continue playing for the school's club team, Morin knows that this season was the end of the line for her.

"I'm not playing collegiate lacrosse," said Morin, who plans to attend NHTI. "It stinks. You put in all that work and it gets taken away. There are many other things going on and it's not great in general, but no would have thought ... you really have to play every game like it's your last."

While South's last official game came in the D1 quarterfinals last spring, this year's group did play together in the offseason, most recently in the New Hampshire Tomahawks Indoor League. The final game of that season took place in March just four days before the NHIAA put the winter sports season on hold before cancelling everything.

"It's hard to think that that was our last game," Kirsten McIntire said. "It would have been a really good season."

When word came down that that season wasn't going to happen, it felt like more than just cancelled games.

"I feel like it was more of a loss," Colburn said. "We had built up so much and this year felt like it was our year to show what we had really built. The first thing I thought was 'I'm never going to be able to wear a South jersey again, never play alongside my best friends.'"

Since then, South's seniors have tried to stay involved with what Ciki McIntire has tried to do with the rest of the team, whether it's being vocal in group chats or participating in the drills and challenges she's presented.

"They were kind of leading these competition groups that we did while we were waiting to see what was going on," the coach said. "They were keeping everyone going, motivating each other."

Morin hopes that by staying in touch, it will show the younger players the leadership example the senior class had been hoping to provide on the field this year.

"We're trying to keep everyone's head up," she said. "Don't just sit there and be sad about it, work toward next season. We try to motivate them to play like every game like it's the last."

While the Panthers won't get the finish they wanted, the seniors have taken solace in the fact they've inspired others to work hard to continue to help the program improve.

"If you couldn't play tomorrow, how hard would you play today?" Kirsten McIntire said, paraphrasing a quote she remembers like a mantra. "This brings a whole new perspective to that. It was always something I had in the back of my head.

"Am I proud of what I accomplished and the work I put in? Yeah, I definitely am."