Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week

Hayes is good and serious

By: Justin Feil
   With every year, the Montgomery High School girls’ lacrosse team has gotten more serious about the sport.
   Not coincidentally over the last four seasons, so has Shannon Hayes. Now a senior, she has come a long way since taking up the sport as a freshman.
   "It was actually my third sport," Hayes said. "I didn’t care about it at all. When I became a junior, I stopped playing basketball. I realized I’m not that bad at lacrosse and started taking it seriously."
   In addition to being a standout soccer player for the MHS girls’ team that reached the Central Jersey Group IV finals in the fall, Hayes is a leader for the Cougar girls’ lacrosse team as it takes aim at a first state tournament berth. To do so, MHS must have at least a .500 record by the state cutoff of May 15.
   "It’s kind of rare for us," said Hayes of being .500. She’s trying to change that in her last scholastic season. It hasn’t been easy.
   After the Cougars opened the season with a win, they lost their next three, including a one-goal loss to Watchung Hills that MHS hopes won’t come back to haunt it at state cutoff time. The third of those losses was a defeat at the hands of unbeaten Bridgewater-Raritan last Monday despite five goals from Hayes.
   The Cougars then trailed Immaculata and were facing the difficult prospect of an uphill climb to dig out of a 1-4 hole in their season. Hayes, though, delivered four goals as MHS rallied for a 7-6 win.
   "It kind of boosted our confidence," Hayes said. "We played Immaculata a bunch of times. We lost to them both times last year, I think. We knew we could beat them. The seniors did a good job of talking ourselves up and giving ourselves confidence."
   MHS rode that momentum last Friday. They fell behind Bernards, 7-6, before Hayes scored the game-tying and game-winning goals in an 8-7 victory that brought MHS back to a .500 record.
   Shannon Hayes is the Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
   "She’s a good lacrosse athlete," said MHS coach Tiffany Trockenbrod. "She really understands the game well. It’s natural to her. It’s hard for a lot of people to make it look natural. It comes easy to her. Maybe it’s a bit of the soccer in her, but she makes it look easy."
   Hayes is glad that it has developed that way. It wasn’t that easy when she took up the sport, and it certainly didn’t seem that easy in the weeks leading up to the regular season this year. Her fast start — which includes another three goals in a 12-5 loss to Hillsborough on Tuesday — has come as almost a relief to her.
   "I thought I’d be bad this year," said Hayes, who has 28 goals in seven games. "In preseason, in practices and scrimmages, I was really, really rusty. I wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t really feeling it when we were scrimmaging. Once we came to a real game, it was back. It’s kind of mental. I just got lucky.
   "I am happy now," she added. "I just think it was mental. I was psyching myself out."
   The Cougars have needed her scoring and leadership up top to help their attack. She has helped out regardless of the strength of the opponent. It is telling that her finest performance this year may have come in the Cougars’ toughest game — against Bridgewater, which climbed to sixth in the laxpower.com rankings for New Jersey.
   "It’s a very good performance," Trockenbrod said. "She can get them in. She’s a tough kid. She gets in there and she gets the shots. It’s just whether she makes them or not. That game, she had some amazing shots."
   Converting her shots in the next two games counted even more as the Cougars twice prevailed by one-goal margins. MHS doesn’t want to live that dangerously, but it was better to be on the winning side than the alternative as had happened against Watchung Hills. They showed their resolve with the back-to-back narrow wins.
   "The entire team started fighting," Trockenbrod said. "They played with more energy and they fought harder. We needed that. They just needed to feel that again. "They knew they wanted to be .500 at the end of that. They knew they had to win that (Bernards) game. We could have been 4-2. They were so mad about that one game they lost by one goal that they didn’t want that to happen again."
   Getting back to .500 at that point was big for the Cougars. It shows that they will have the opportunity to reach the state tournament if they continue to focus and bring their top efforts.
   "A lot of people didn’t think we’d win against Bernards," Hayes said. "It was a pretty big win. It made us .500. Hopefully, we’ll be .500 again. We have to be .500 to make states.
   "In the Watchung Hills game, we had a bad first half," she added. "In the Bernards game, we brought it to them in the first half. In the last five minutes, it was neck and neck so there was not a lot of catching up to do. In the Watchung game, we were down four or five goals and that took it out of us."
   Hayes has tried to ensure that the Cougars won’t fall behind in games. She is trying do her part by scoring and finding others for assists.
   "I go into every game with the same mindset," Hayes said. "It doesn’t faze me if they’re good or bad. I go in to every game the same way, no matter if they’re the best or worst. I try to do the same thing.
   "I try to lead the offense. Not just by scoring, but talking it up out there. Being a good role model out there. And I try to be good leader off the field."
   Hayes would like to go out on a winning team, just as she did last fall on another outstanding soccer season. The Cougar lacrosse team is improved this year, and Shannon Hayes is poised to be a big part of MHS’ success this spring.
   "She has calmed the attack," Trockenbrod said. "She’s a leader on attack. She passes. She makes the good decisions. We’re still working on her shot selection, but everyone is. She has a hard shot and sometimes she thinks she can shoot through the goalie.
   "She’s been scoring. I still think there’s more for her to do," she added. "She’s stepping up. I know she has a little more to give."
   And that should help the MHS girls’ lacrosse team continue to improve a little bit at a time.