The Ewing High girls lacrosse team had tenacity and Kellyan Krepp, but Steinert had Mani Kissling and a tightened up defense down the stretch.
The Spartans managed to hold off the scrappy Blue Devils for a 10-9 victory in an entertaining game Monday.
Kissling’s six goals and one assist led the Spartans, as the senior managed to slightly surpass five scores by Krepp. Sophomore Paige Meszaros also helped Steinert with her first career hat trick, equaling three goals by Ewing’s Imani Hill.
Steinert (3-1) scored six straight goals to turn a 4-2 deficit into an 8-4 halftime lead. Ewing (1-3) cut it to 8-6 before the Spartans got two more for a four-goal advantage. Back came the Devils with three straight to cut it to 10-9 with 7:22 remaining.
From that point, the Spartans settled down and held Ewing off the board by limiting their shot opportunities.
“For a while there at the end, Ewing had possession of the ball but we weren’t giving them any openings to move in,” Spartan coach Lorraine Heisler said. “Any time they tried to move in we shut them down, they had to back out and think of something else to do.”
In the final six minutes, Steph Miranda came up with a steal and went the length of the field before Ewing goalie Neera Mohammed made a nice save.
As the clock wound down, Steinert’s Sydney Larsen and Lynzie Worth both came up with nice defensive plays to get possession back for the Spartans.
“They get into the method where they start forcing more and more.” Steinert goalie Dylan Phoenix said. “Eventually they find that hole and that’s what they were doing, that’s what happened in the second half.
“That girl (Krepp) found that hole that she knew she could get through. It worked multiple times and we eventually caught on to what she was doing and we knew we had to slow her down and stop her.”
Meszaros felt her team just needed to calm down a little.
“They are pretty tough, they came back a lot, but we held our own,” said the soph, who was injured most of last year.
“Our passes weren’t there. I guess we were getting too excited.”
Kissling agreed, saying, “I thought we had it in the bag, that’s when we let our guard down and they started coming back and we all got frazzled.”
It was Kissling who came up big when necessary. After Ewing took its 4-2 lead, the senior attack scored the first two and last one in Steinert’s six-goal run.
When Hill and Krepp responded with goals, Kissling stopped the bleeding with two more goals, giving her 21 in four games this season. Ewing responded with three straight and Steinert spent the remainder of the game holding on and never getting comfortable.
“No, and I wanted to get comfortable,” Heisler said with a laugh. “But they didn’t. I figured it would be a tough game. It’s always pretty tough between us.
“They have a good program, they do good things over there and I think we’re pretty evenly matched. The scoreboard shows that.”
“They’re definitely a good team,” Kissling said. “They have speed and they have their plays as well, which work good for them.”
But they didn’t have Kissling herself, which proved to be the difference.
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