Coach Meredith Jackes and her Londonderry High junior varsity girls’ lacrosse contingent had an extremely busy and successful spring. And in the vast majority of cases, the team members’ memories of the campaign will be quite positive.
After posting a superb 13-2 regular season record, the Lady Lancers made it as far as the quarterfinals of the JV tournament before reaching the end of the line.
The LHS crew’s only regular season losses came at the hands of those arch rivals from Pinkerton Academy, and both came in tight decisions of 8-7 and 10-7. The quarterfinal tourney loss which ended the locals’ season came in a 5-4 barn-burner with the Concord High Crimson Tide.
But despite those moderate downers – during which the coach felt her charges put forth some of their strongest overall work of the campaign – there were simply slews of high points for the Londonderry squad along the way.
“This was a great team. They worked well together,” said Jackes. “The girls executed the game-plan every game and were able to transition the ball well up the field. Our defense was tremendous, and the goal-keeping was solid. This is the type of team where I could put any player in any position on the field. And it was a great group of girls as well.”
The team’s juniors included attacks Monica Maney, Hanna Batchelor (winner of the squad’s Most Intense Player Award), and Maddie Smith, midfielder Nikki Singh, and defenders Katie Montminy and Meg Butler.
The sophomores were attacks Madison McElroy, Jillian Purpura, Mackenzie Olin, Hailey Gilbert, and Madison Havener, middies Kat Wells, Emily Davison, and Hannah McGrath (the Coaches Award Winner), defenders Jill Murray, Maggie McAlister, Hannah Cohen, Tori Ackley, and Courtney Brown, and keeper Elise Isaak.
And the Lady Lancers’ freshmen included middies Lindsay Robbins, Emily Holland, and Kiersten Hoglund, defender Faye Brown, and Erika Tsetsilas, a player who wound up being relegated to the sidelines by a leg injury, at which point she became a team manager and important cheerleader for her crew. And that loyalty and team-first attitude were recognized by coach Jackes when Testsilas – who is a member of a family which has produced a great many quality athletes for Londonderry High over the decades since the school opened – was given the contingent’s Most Dedicated Player Award.
Jackes herself put in some extra duty from the end of the varsity team’s regular season through its tournament as she became interim head coach of that squad in place of the departed Mike Boyle.