The Paly girls’ lacrosse team conquered the Pioneer High School Mustangs with a score of 17-6. The win allowed the team to improve its league record to 6-2-0.

The game started close with Maya Benatar (‘16) scoring Paly’s first goal, but Pioneer quickly retaliated and found the net for their first goal of the game. Excellent passing from Kristen DeStefano (‘14), Paige Bara (‘15), Liana Pickrell (‘15) allowed Lauren Gargiulo (‘15) to score the team’s second goal of the night. Gargiulo fed the ball from behind the goal to Lisa Rogge (‘15), who then ran in for a quick shot, making the score 3-1. Paly’s momentum continued with Claire Chevallier (‘15) recieving the ball from a foul and driving from  half to score.

With 11:21 left in the half Paly continued to put pressure on the Pioneer defense. DeStefano faked out her defenders and scored on a bounce shot, making it 5-1 with 9:21 left in the half.Following a Pioneer time-out, the Paly came out strong with Benatar scoring her second goal for the night off an assist from Ami Drez (‘14).

Holly Tumminaro (‘16) got the ball off the draw and passed it back to Bara, who proceeded to sprint past her defenders and score with a bullet from the 8 meter.

Pioneer attempted to gain some momentum after scoring its second goal of the night with three minutes left in the half. Paly scored again, but the goal was quickly retaliated after Pioneer scored seconds later. However, the Vikings came back quickly after a passing sequence from Allie Peery (‘15) and Andrea Clerici-Hermandinger (‘14) ended with a goal from Hermandinger. With :22 left to play in the half Drez drove from outside the arc to score the final goal of the half, allowing Paly to extend their lead to 10-4 over Pioneer.

Pioneer started the second half strong by scoring in the first 30 seconds of half. Paly proceeded to have two have good attacks, but were unable to execute on their shots.

“I think that going into the second half Paige Bara was definitely a huge spark and kinda stepped back up to the level that we needed to be playing at,” Coach Jamie Nesbitt said.

Following a pass from Pickrell, Bara scored for the Vikings first goal of the half. Bara continued her momentum and was able to get the ball and drove to goal to score again. With 18:53 left in the game Pioneer managed to score again, bringing the score to 12-6 with Paly in the lead. With the clock ticking down Paly continued to hold on to their lead after scoring again off an 8 meter shot by Bara.Peery followed the momentum and cradled the ball from the half to the goal where she was able to roll off of her defenders and score for the Vikings.

Hermandinger then drew a foul and got the ball up to Drez who passed to Rogge for the feed to Tumminaro, who was able to score her first goal of the night. Hermandinger retrieved the ball out of a jumble and passed it up to Drez. Following several passes, Peery was able to score for the Vikings, bringing the  score was 16-6 to 11:35 left to play. Gargiulo then proceeded to carry the ball behind the goal where she passed to Paige Anderson (‘15), but the pass went wide and was retrieved by Pioneer. After a foul on DeStefano,  a Pioneer player recieved a yellow which caused them to have to play with a man down. Paly was able to increase their lead after  Peery passed the ball to Drez for a quick shot.

Goalie Meredith Kinnaman (‘16) made two saves in the last five minutes in order to help keep Paly’s substantial lead. The Vikings finished the game with a 17-6 lead over Pioneer.

“We came out with a win but it was really rough on all sides of the field. We ended up finishing a lot of goals and coming out with a lot of plays, but had a tough time keeping the ball on the offensive side,” Peery said of the team’s performance.

The Lady Vikes will play again on Wednesday at Sequoia High School.