By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Jill Thomas knows winning back to back titles isn’t easy.
But she also knew she had a special team capable of doing just that.
“We had a plan coming in and we stuck to it,” said the Princeton Day School girls lacrosse coach, whose team topped Pennington, 18-11, for its second straight state Prep B title. “We knew it would be harder to repeat and I’m really proud of the girls.”
Hannah Bunce scored six goals and assisted on four others to lead the offense for the Panthers. Morgan Mills had four goals and Madison Mundenar added three for the top-seeded Panthers.
“They have great players and we knew if you played team defense and took care of the ball it would be a key,” Thomas said. “We got beautiful goals to open the game. We passed the ball when we should have passed the ball and we took care of it when we needed to.
“Hannah took it to another level today. We tell them all the time the draw possession leads to so many things. She got it and got untracked down here and went to goal. We knew if we could spread it that we’d have a 1v1 and Hannah’s 1v1 was on today.”
Repeating as Prep B champions is something special for Thomas, whose young team has grow into quite a unit.
“This feels really good,” Thomas said. “This team is one year older and more experienced. This is a team that could’ve let it go and gotten sloppy and cocky, but they just kept getting better.”
Bunce picked the right time to have a big game. But she also knows she is just part of a bigger picture, which is a team filled with players who do their jobs well.
“We knew we had to pull them out and then we could do what we wanted to do.” Bunce said. “That opened things up for me. I saw that she was overplaying me a little on my right side so I went left and it was straight open.
“This is great two years in a row and we are sending our seniors off with two championships. It’s always great to have a good game in a championship, but to have such a big impact on the win is an amazing feeling.”
