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Greenwich Girls Lax Rolls Past Ridgefield, Eyes Postseason

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Big Red’s Maddie Graves charges hard to the net during a game against Staples High School. (Avery Belicka photo)
Big Red’s Maddie Graves charges hard to the net during a game against Staples High School. (Avery Belicka photo)

The Greenwich High School girls lacrosse team found a much-needed victory against Ridgefield, setting the pace early and scoring the first four goals of the game in a 15-9 win over the Tigers, last Thursday night at RHS.

The Cardinals were led by senior captain Maddy Graves with five goals, as they avoided a three-game losing streak heading into the final week of the regular season.

Paige Mautner added four first half goals in the win and goalie Kylie Ginsberg had an efficient night in goal saving 14 shots.

Graves, Mautner and Becca Litt all provided hat tricks, while Anne Dunster scored a pair of goals and Meghan Collins added one of her own in the fast-paced first half.

Greenwich improved to 8-4 overall and 7-2 in the FCIAC. With the loss Ridgefield fell to 9-5 overall and 7-2 in league play.

“In terms of seedings in the FCIAC, we know that Ridgefield always plays us hard,” first-year head coach Caitlin Young said. “They are a well coached team, a fast team and we had to come out and make a statement. We knew we had to come out strong in order to balance out how they were going to come out.”

The Tigers had seven different players score a goal, led by senior captain Sarah Kaiser with two. Junior Kimmy Weinstock added two late goals but it wasn’t enough to come back against the Cardinals who seemed to be on a mission Thursday night.

“It’s crunch time in our season and we really talked about peaking at the right time,” Young said. “We had a good performance against New Canaan and our biggest thing was maintaining that, if not improving on that.”

Greenwich came within one goal of New Canaan just two days prior to the Ridgefield win, proving they are still capable of competing with the power houses of the FCIAC.

With the conference and state tournament season kicking into high gear, Greenwich will rely on Ginsberg in goal and captain Natalie Paletta on defense. The offense is led by senior captains Graves and Dunster. Dunster added five assists in the win over Ridgefield and can find the cutter with ease in the Cardinal offense. Graves can handle when teams decide to double team her and the rest of the offense responds to it.

Now, Young and the Cardinals are looking to make a run in the postseason — something very familiar to Young who captured two FCIAC titles during her time playing for Wilton.

She then went on to play at the University of North Carolina before returning to coach for Greenwich.

“The FCIAC is far more competitive now than when I was in high school,” Young said. “To make a run in the FCIAC, it’s kind of like the ACC. I compare it to the ACC in the college world just in terms of it’s the top conference. So if you can be a top contender in the FCIAC, then hopefully that provides some confidence going into the state tournament.

“When I was growing up, it was the same teams like Greenwich, New Canaan and Darien that were all the top teams and some of those games hit harder in terms of me wanting some of those games back,” added Young. “But, I’m determined to get Greenwich back to being one of those top power house seeds.”

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