Laconia girls lacrosse beats Hopkinton to win third D3 title in four years

MANCHESTER - Laconia High School girls lacrosse players were only expected to be spectators for Tuesday night’s Division III final at Manchester Memorial’s Chabot-McDonough Field.

The fourth-seeded Sachems decided to crash the party, beating No. 5 Pelham in the quarterfinals, upsetting No. 1 Derryfield in the semifinals and knocking out No. 2 Hopkinton in the title game.

Tuesday’s 10-6 win didn’t come easy, but a second-half offensive outburst - including a Rebecca Howe hat trick and two of Skyler Tautkus’ three goals - was enough to hold off Hopkinton.

Howe and Tautkus didn’t have as much success in the first half. Following Tautkus’ first goal to open the scoring 4:31 into the game, the Sachems’ dynamic duo was held in check by the Hawks’ defense.

“Hopkinton had set up a couple faceguards on us,” Tautkus said of the duo’s first-half struggles. “It was tough to get open and set each other up.”

Howe concurred.

“They were pressuring us out a little harder,” Howe said of Hopkinton’s stifling first-half defense. “So our other offensive teammates were having a little trouble getting the ball to us.”

The result was a 3-3 halftime score.

“I think both teams came out a little tight in the first half,” said Laconia coach Bob Howe, whose team has now won three titles in the last four years. “That’s one of the lowest-scoring first halves I’ve seen in our history. It was just great defense.”

It was a different story in the second half.

Tautkus scored 3:20 into the second half to get Laconia going. Megan Gaspa scored four minutes later and the flood gates opened. Howe sandwiched a pair of goals around a Caitlin Beattie tally in a span of two and a half minutes as Laconia’s advantage widened to 8-3. Howe added her final goal with 10:17 to play for a 9-3 Sachems’ lead.

“We had issues sliding on defense,” Hawks coach Tim Bassett said of allowing the Sachems offense to get untracked. “And we just never really got our offense clicking. That’s very uncharacteristic of us.

“(Laconia) played a great game. We kind of knew what they were doing. We just didn’t get there in time to do anything about it.”

Hopkinton would make one final push, as Lyndon Flanagan and Taylor Signor scored just 37 seconds apart with 8:22 to play, cutting Laconia’s lead to 9-5.

Tautkus closed out Laconia’s scoring with 4:26 to play, rendering Flanagan’s goal seconds later meaningless in the game’s outcome.

“We told them what we always tell them during halftime, ‘It’s zero to zero,’" Bob Howe said of his lecture during the break. “It really was - at 3-3 - zero to zero, and we just told them to go out, have fun and relax. We’ve been a second-half team so far in the playoffs, and we did it again today.”

Joining Tautkus with one first-half goal each for Laconia was Sydney Stevens and Nicole Turpin.

Hopkinton’s offense was led by Signor and Flanagan, who recorded two goals each, and solo tallies by Amelia Bassett and Ellie Owen.