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Fog/Mist Mepham's Lady Pirates piling up goals
Mepham’s come out firing on the lacrosse field and notched a second straight win with a 16-10 win over Sewanhaka on April 2. The Lady Pirates (4-3 overall, 3-2 in conference play) have piled up 31 goals with junior Nicole Stackpole standing front-and-center in the recent scoring surge. She scored 10 times and added six assists in the two wins, but is just one of several key cogs on a team whose scoring has become as balanced as legal scales.
“When [teams] face guard one of our scorers, we have three or four others that can score,” coach Geraldine O’Brien said.
The offensive numbers are gaudy by any account, but the contributions have come from every angle. Eight different players scored at least once in the previous win, and six different Mepham players had goals in a 15-10 win over Carey on March 30. “We came out in the Carey game and we exploded,” O’Brien said, noting an 8-3 edge her team opened up at halftime.
Indeed, even the newcomers have quickly taken to the up-tempo attack, as freshman attack Taylor Black has scored 13 times with four assists in her first seven varsity games. While freshman Brianna Caponi lacks the sheer volume of goals that Black does, she did score one of the most important of the season so far—the opening goal in what became an 11-10 win over Bethpage, seeded No. 2 in the preseason, on March 22. Classmate Ashley Donnelly is the third member of the freshman group that has already had a huge impact on the team. “[Brianna’s] goals show up when we need them,” O’Brien said. “Her opening goal is one of the standouts. It just showed the rest of the girls that we can score on them.”
The Lady Eagles, backed by a returning All-County goalie, had few answers for the potent Mepham offense. Brianna Whelan was peppered with 15 shots and stopped just three of them. The Lady Pirates, meanwhile, were led by junior goalie JoAnn DeLauter, who faced considerably more action (22 shots) and kept her team not only in the game, but on the winning side. In the two wins, she’s stopped 30 shots.
