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For the third consecutive season, Rockbridge County High School matched up with Western Albemarle in the Class 4 girls lacrosse semifinals. And for the third straight year, the Warriors prevailed.
Western used a key 8-0 run that stretched across halftime to earn a 16-10 victory over the Wildcats in Crozet in the state semifinal round on Tuesday of last week.
In the Class 4 state championship game on Saturday in Fredericksburg, Western defeated Dominion 14-11 to win its first state title in program history, finishing the season undefeated at 18-0.
In Tuesday’s semifinal, Maggie Craytor totaled five goals and three assists for Western, while Reeve Goldstein and Taylor Florin each tallied three goals and one assist.
Rachel Hines made 11 saves in goal for RC (16-2), and McKenzie Hines paced the Wildcat offense with two goals and two assists. Nala Shearer finished with two goals and one helper, and Libba Erskine and Lola Mulitalo notched two goals apiece.
After falling to the Warriors in the semifinals each of the past two seasons – and also suffering a 9-8 overtime loss when the teams met in Lexington back in March – the Wildcats had been building up to this game for quite some time.
“It took a lot of work and a lot of fight” to return to the state semifinals, Rachel Hines said. “I knew that each day in practice, and each day in games, I’m going to have to work hard and aim for this game. This is a tough team, and it’s going to take a lot of fight to win against them.”
RC came out of the gates with that resolve on display, and the teams traded scores for most of the opening period. McKenzie Hines got the Wildcats on the board first, scoring from Shearer’s assist with 23:34 remaining, and Mulitalo and Halina Homiak would also post goals to put RC in front in the early stages.
Florin notched the first two Western goals, and she set up Craytor to knot the score at 3-3 with 10:59 to play. McLean Stokes then gave the Warriors their first lead with an unassisted tally at the 10:27 mark, but Mulitalo tied it from a Maddie Dahl assist with 8:38 to go.
Rachel Hines was brilliant in the first half, recording four saves with just one goal allowed in the first 11 minutes and notching seven of her 11 stops before the intermission.
But mistakes quickly started to catch up with the Wildcats. RC committed 26 turnovers in the game – 13 in each half – while Western totaled only 11.
“We made more turnovers than they did, and in a game that’s a semifinal at states, you have to play cleaner,” RC head coach Susan Nye said. “We had a number of unforced errors.” The turnover discrepancy canceled out the ’Cats’ 17-10 edge on the draw circle. And it made for simple math: more possession time for the Warriors translated to more scoring chances, as Western outshot RC 31-18 for the game.
“We had a few mistakes that definitely could have been changed, and could have made a different outcome on the game,” Rachel Hines said. “I think just the multiple opportunities that they had to keep going to goal definitely made a difference.”
The Warriors started to cash in on those extra opportunities late in the first half, with goals from Goldstein and Genevieve Hathaway giving Western a 6-4 lead after 25 minutes. And the run continued in the second period, as the Warriors reeled off the first six goals after the break.
Craytor scored twice during that stretch, which also featured goals from Florin, Hathaway, Katie Alhusen and Goldstein. The latter’s marker with 15:55 to play gave the Warriors a commanding 12-4 advantage.
Western’s first three goals of the second half all came with a player advantage following an RC yellow card. The Warriors’ player-up conversions helped them put their stamp on the game.
“You have to play full 7-on-7 in games like that. They capitalized when they were a person up,” Nye said. “The momentum did a drastic shift.”
Shearer broke the Wildcats’ offensive drought just 30 seconds after Goldstein’s marker, scoring from a McKenzie Hines assist. But RC needed a goal-scoring spurt of its own, and the Warriors’ defense – combined with some additional Wildcat turnovers – prevented the momentum from swinging back to the visitors.
Two more Craytor goals were answered by McKenzie Hines and Shearer, pushing the score to 14-7. Stokes and Goldstein then registered for Western, extending the margin to 16-7 with just 2:27 to go.
Though the rally came too late to impact the outcome, the Wildcats showed tremendous spirit in the late stages of the game. Erskine scored twice in the waning moments, sandwiching her goals around a Josie Caldwell free-position tally as RC notched three markers in the final 44 seconds.
“This team has always fought for everything,” Nye said. “They wanted to end the game under their terms, even though the score didn’t reflect us winning. I’m proud of them for continuing to fight, continuing to try to do the Wildcat way.”
McKenzie Hines collected nine draw controls and a pair of caused turnovers for the Wildcats, while Dahl snagged four draws and also chipped in two assists. In addition to her excellent work stopping shots, Rachel Hines had a game-high three caused turnovers.
Hathaway and Stokes each finished with two goals for the Warriors, and Alhusen totaled one goal and two assists. Though she didn’t face the same volume of shots as her counterpart, Western goalie Kennedy Buntrock kept RC at bay with five saves, while Hathaway, Florin and Juliana Murphy each posted two caused turnovers.
Even though the Wildcats still couldn’t leap over the semifinal hurdle, the last three years have seen unprecedented success for the program. RC has won each of the last three Region 4D championships, putting together a combined 40-5 overall record. Western is the only team that has beaten the Wildcats across the past three seasons.
“It means so much to me to even just be a part, to get to [the state semifinals],” Rachel Hines said. “It took a lot of heart, and that’s what this team is all about.” RC will lose some key players, including the Hines sisters. McKenzie was the Region 4D Player of the Year and will continue her career at Radford, while Rachel, another first team all-region selection, will play for Liberty. Fellow seniors Lexie Polly – who recently committed to the University of Lynchburg – Jaden McCoy and Lily Youngman were also all-region honorees.
But the Wildcats will return six all-region performers, including first team picks Erskine, Mulitalo and Shearer. RC’s incoming freshman class is large in numbers and gifted in skill, and the Lex Lax Lightning youth program continues to produce promising talent.
In short, the future still looks bright for the Wildcats. And Nye hopes that the past few years have laid the foundation for sustained success.
“It’s been an incredible run,” the RC coach said about the last three seasons. “I think these girls have bought into what I’m trying to do as a coach, and that means the world to me: these girls and these parents believing in the lacrosse program.”
