Lalli’s career high nets Knights win
By: Justin Feil
After an overtime loss to Pennington dropped the West Windsor-Plainsboro High North girls’ lacrosse team to 4-6, the Knights began to turn it around.
Convincing wins over Princeton and Ewing were a start, but those teams had a combined record of 4-19. What the Knights needed for confirmation that they were truly back was a win over a solid team, and they got it with a 19-11 win over Hun last Thursday, a win over a team with double-digit wins and just four losses.
The Knights’ attack looked unstoppable with 15 goals in the first half. It was all the more impressive that it came against a team that had surrendered that many goals just once in an entire game all season.
"It is unheard of," said WW-P North head coach Beth Mitchell. "We ten-goaled them a couple times. We had a running clock. Who would have expected that? To play a quality team and ten-goal them, everything was played beautifully by the girls. They played great. They made very few mistakes."
It helped that the Knights were at full strength. Beginning with the loss to Pennington, they had been without Katie Lalli for the past three games. The junior attack returned to score a career-high eight goals and help to turn the team’s fortunes, as four days later they topped 9-5 North Hunterdon and won a fifth straight game, 20-4, over North Brunswick on Tuesday.
Katie Lalli is the Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
"No way did I expect her to come back like that," said Mitchell, whose team is 9-6 going into Tuesday’s game against Montgomery High. "With Katie Lalli, she is so consistent down in our offensive end. She really helps control the offensive zone. Without her, a big part of our offense was missing. She has a smoothness about her. She’s very dependable."
Lalli wasn’t necessarily looking for a big offensive game in her first game back. She was just anxious to play after watching the last three games on the sidelines.
"The Pennington game went into overtime," she said, "and I had to sit on the side and watch our team throw it away."
Lalli, who pulled her hamstring in a practice with her club Tri-State team, wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again upon her return. The Knights discovered a new level of crispness in the win over Hun.
"After a few of our losses last week, we realized we need to work on throwing and catching the basic stuff," Lalli said. "Now I think we can move on from that. We were focused on that last week.
"After the game against Hun, I could really tell our midfield transition, the connecting passes, have been a lot better. The ball moves down the field nicely now. We kept rushing it before. It seems like now it all works together."
The Knights hope to keep it working together as they prepare for the state tournament. WW-P South is bouncing back from a tough beginning to the season that included five losses by two goals or fewer. Now they’ve won five straight to pull closer to what Lalli was hoping for this season.
"We lost a lot of starting players from last year who graduated, so I thought we’d be OK, but not as strong as last year," she said. "At the beginning of the season, we weren’t very strong. We should have won a lot of games we lost. I would have thought we’d be better. But we’re looking better now."
It’s helped to have the team at full strength, with everyone on the same page. And none of the Knights have forgotten what it felt like to be under .500 halfway through the year.
"The girls were sick of losing," Mitchell said. "They’re good athletes. They’re a good team. We finally got going. It just took us a little more time.
"The Hun game was a great game for us. Not only did the girls really work hard, but they didn’t walk off down by a goal. We walked off winning by well more than one goal against a good team. It shows we’re a good team."
The win over Hun that the Knights wanted badly, and one they needed to assure themselves that they’ll be a team to contend with in the postseason.
"We came out really fired up for it," Lalli said. "Last year, we lost to them and it wasn’t even close. We had lost to Notre Dame this year and we heard it was a close game between Notre Dame and Hun so we thought we’d be close. We scored a couple goals right off the bat.
"Before, we had trouble communicating with each other. Our fundamental skills weren’t where they should have been. After the Hun game, everything clicked for us. We all played well together."
It certainly helped to have Lalli back in the lineup. She’s been one of the top finishers in the area this season, and proved it again with a career-high in a game the Knights needed.
"She works so hard at the sport," Mitchell said. "She’s been playing so many years, and with her family, it’s great to see the success from all the hard work she’s put into it."

