The Madison girls lacrosse team appears to be, quite simply, unstoppable. Tuesday’s 19-7 win over Lake Braddock was just another notch on the Warhawks’ resumé as they began their march through the Northern Region tournament.
Madison’s first five goals came from different scorers and the Warhawks led 6-0 in the opening five minutes of a game that was practically over before it started. Julia Kehoe and Alex Condon scored four goals each, and Sam Babbitt added a goal and four assists. Taylor Rivera-Silva was rarely tested in goal and finished with eight saves.
Taylor Livick and Allie Snow scored 15 seconds apart to finally put the Bruins on the board seven and a half minutes into the game and each finished with two goals, but little else went right for Lake Braddock. Alyssa Harrison made 15 saves, but the typical barrage of offense from Madison that no team in 2011 has put a stop to proved to be too much.
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Still, head coach Amanda Counts wasn’t nearly as impressed with the effort on Tuesday as she was when the Warhawks won the Liberty District championship last week with a .
“Big picture, yes,” Counts said when asked if she was pleased with Tuesday’s result. “There were a few things that were sloppier than I normally see. There were points where you could see they were feeling the intensity of the situation and playing more frantic than I expect them to play.”
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It seems that regardless of how sloppy Madison plays, few teams, if any, will be able to provide much resistance. Westfield will be the next to try on Thursday. Of course, the Bulldogs didn’t fare so well in a May 5 meeting that the Warhawks won 21-7, which has been just about the average score during Madison’s 16-0 season.
Counts did praise the chemistry her team displayed. 15 of the Warhawks’ 19 goals came off of assists, and while a few shots were forced from long range or bad angles, passing was crisp and everyone always seemed to know right where to be.
“That’s one of the things that’s nice about this particular group,” Counts said. “They're really not looking to outshine each other, they really look to play together.”
A win on Thursday would probably mean a match up with Chantilly in the semifinals in what would be one of the most anticipated games of the year. While the Chargers stumbled against Oakton in the Concorde District championship game after beating the Cougars 12-10 earlier in the year, they had no problems during an 18-2 rout of Washington-Lee in their first round game and will now host Marshall. Of course, if Madison’s 23-15 win over Oakton is any means of comparison, that game may not be as exciting as many would hope. Still, Counts isn’t overlooking Westfield.
“They have a lot of strong players,” Counts said. “They’ve definitely come a long way from last season, and there’s lots of potential on [that] team. We respect their program a lot.”
