South Windsor Girls Lax Rebounds With Victory Over Southington

Eleven games into the season, South Windsor High girls lacrosse head coach Ed Duclos can describe his team in just one word: tough.

Indeed, the Bobcats improved to 7-3-1 on the year with a hard-fought 10-8 victory over a game Southington side at home on Friday evening.

“I’m extremely proud of this team,” Duclos said. “This team is just tough.”

Tori Russo and Ashley Murtha scored 3 goals apiece for South Windsor, while Emma Richard added two and Jackie Pilatti and Bridget Kelly each scored once.

Carolynn Keal had 3 goals and 2 assists for Southington, while Helen Dinnan scored twice and Tess Lee, Alexa Luponio and Kim Wood each had one goal in the loss.

It was a big win for South Windsor, which was coming off an 11-5 loss to Hall on the road on Tuesday.

“To get this win was huge,” Duclos said. “Last year, we didn’t win a division game, this year we did. … We learn from losses. We’ve only had three, but we make the changes and we come back.”

For Southington, which fell to 4-6, there were plenty of positive things to take away from the loss.

“We played as hard as we possibly could have and we’re going to take this momentum and go into next week,” Southington head coach Amy Clark said. “We played hard to the very end in both games this week. … I told them to have fun. When I tell them that, they play a little bit better.”

Defense again played a big role for the Bobcats, with goalie Meg Brault stopping 11 shots and defenders Taylor Pendergast, Pilatti and Angie King relentlessly hounding Southington’s attackers.

“They’re just really solidifying the defense,” Duclos said.

South Windsor looked like it had the game in hand when it went up 8-4 with 6 minutes to play. But Southington stormed back to close within 8-6 with four minutes left.

The Blue Knights eventually closed again to 10-8 with a penalty shot and a player advantage as a result of a yellow card, but they got no closer as the Bobcats’ defense refused to break.

“I thought we were going to get that last goal,” Clark said. “But we just couldn’t capitalize.”

All of which led Duclos to use that word again.

“We’re just tough,” he said. “We’re just not caving in to people now.”