Pinkerton girls lacrosse survives Souhegan rally to win D1 championship

MANCHESTER - When Rob Daziel got the first-half stat sheet for Tuesday's Division I girls lacrosse championship game, he held it up to to show his Pinkerton Academy players and then ripped it up.

The No. 2 Astros had a commanding lead over No. 1 Souhegan and had thrown everything they had at the Sabers in the first 25 minutes. Now, Daziel told the players, it was time to start over.

The Sabers thought the same thing, and after falling behind by as many as eight, they put together a remarkable comeback, cutting the lead to one with a little more than a minute left.

But Pinkerton was able to win the final draw - something it hadn't done much of all game - and ran out the clock for a 13-12 win over Souhegan at Southern New Hampshire University. It was the second straight title-game win over the Sabers for Pinkerton, and third overall, despite ending up on the wrong side of an 8-1 run in the final 18 minutes.

"We knew that if we came out and executed our game plan ... we ran every play in our book in that first half," Daziel said. "Every play and we didn't repeat one offensive play. They executed every one perfectly and we were just going to start the game over. They handed me the stat sheet and I ripped it up and said 'it's a new game.' Souhegan made it a new game."

Pinkerton (18-3) ended the first half by scoring five unanswered goals in the final seven minutes to take a 9-3 lead into the break. Kennedy Daziel led the Astros with four goals, all in the first half, while Maggie McCarthy had two goals and two assists and Sierra Sanchez and Micaela Capozzo had two goals and an assist each. Erin Coutts also had two goals.

The Astros stretched their lead to 12-4 with 18:25 to play before Souhegan (18-3) rallied back behind the play of Mickenzie Larivee.

Larivee, who finished the game with five goals and three assists, started the Sabers on a 6-0 run, as she repeatedly won the draw and had a hand in five of the goals on that run. Jocelyn Donohue added three goals and Madison Learned had a goal and three assists.

"I wasn't thinking anything but wanting to get back to a place where we had something to believe, that we could come back," Larivee said. "It was almost running time for them. I was like 'this is ridiculous.' I had this adrenaline rush that I was going to go down and get that fight that we need."

Souhegan took early leads of 1-0 and 2-1 before Pinkerton scored three straight goals, going up 4-2 on a goal by McCarthy with 11:36 left in the half. Donohue answered for Souhegan 51 seconds later and both teams would go scoreless for the next four minutes.

Kennedy Daziel finally broke the drought to make it 5-3 and McCarthy made it 6-3 with 2:55 left in the half. The Astros then scored three goals in the final 1:11 of the first half, and over a span of nearly 27 minutes, Pinkerton outscored Souhegan 11-2.

"The first half we played was not our game," Souhegan coach Maren Petropulos said. "We played the second half like we should have played the first half, and like we had all season. We just didn't have a good first half. I don't know if they were panicking on attack, but if we had had a few more saves, we're right in it. It was a series of unfortunate errors."

A goal by Larivee with 8:47 to go cut the Astros' lead to 12-10, but Capozzo pushed the advantage back to three with 4:58 to play. Learned scored 43 seconds later and Larivee made it a one-goal game with 1:09 to play.

After the Sabers had won 18 of the previous 26 draws to that point, Alison Davis won the draw for Pinkerton and the Astros were able to kill the rest of the clock.

"The girls worked hard all season," Rob Daziel said. "We never took a day off. We worked and worked and worked. When you get into a tough situation like we were, they never gave up all the way to the end. When it counted, they knew they could continue to play."