Lakeville South defeated Stillwater 17-8 at Eden Prairie High School on Thursday to advance to the girls lacrosse state championship game.
South midfielder Tori Tschida led the way for the Cougars with four goals and six assists, with fellow attacker Ella Mills and midfielders Sivanna O’Brien and Katie Grubbs combining for 10 goals and two assists. Stillwater attackers Jackylyn Richert and Lydia Glass scored two goals each.
“To get the opportunity to play for the championship is great,” Lakeville head coach Joel Tornell said. “They pushed for it. They wanted it to happen, and they pushed for it.”
The Cougars will meet Prior Lake at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday in Eden Prairie for the state title.
Stillwater’s Rayna Malmberg scored the first goal of the game just three minutes into the game. Grubbs responded just 16 seconds later with a goal of her own, starting a swift 5-0 Lakeville run in just under five minutes of play. The Cougars held a 7-2 lead after the first quarter.
Lakeville’s Charlotte Fannin put another point on the board 26 seconds into the second quarter to extend the lead to six. But Stillwater responded nicely with a 4-1 run the rest of the quarter to cut the Cougar lead in half — trailing, 9-6, heading into the break.
“Our biggest issue is that we need possession,” Mills said of Lakeville’s second quarter struggles. “Once we have possession, we have the ball, like, I don’t think there’s any team that could stop us. … we took deep breaths, we are calm and we got that ball back.”
O’Brien halted the Ponies’ momentum with back-to-back goals within the first three minutes of the second half. Tschida scored the Cougars’ 12th goal of the game shortly after as Lakeville extended the lead back up to six right out of the break. Stillwater and Lakeville notched one goal each through the next eight minutes as the Cougars led, 13-7, after three periods.
“We had a little setback, for part of the game we didn’t play as well,” Tornell said. “We got back rolling in the third quarter and things kind of smooth back out.”
Lakeville continued to pour it on Stillwater scoring four goals to the Ponies’ one to secure the victory and a spot in the state title game.
“We’re very excited,” Tschida said. “We’re more focused on the team win and not on stats today. We’re excited to be in this game because, obviously, we were in it last year and we wanted to come back, especially for our seniors.”
“I think we gave it our all definitely sucks,” Stillwater coach Carly Fedorowski said. “But we just came up short and yellow cards don’t help. When we end up in the box, not very good things happen. But we’ll come back better than ever on Saturday. We’ve got another chance to end on a win.”
Stillwater will take on Benilde-St Margaret’s for third place at 1 p.m. Saturday at Eden Prairie High School.
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