For a program with as much winning in its history as the Arrowhead girls lacrosse program, one would think it could be a difficult task ranking its myriad of state championships in school history.
However, for coach Tom Truttschel, there’s no doubt that Friday night’s 7-5 victory over Whitefish Bay/Nicolet/Shorewood (WNS) to claim the 2017 Wisconsin Lacrosse Federation title is the sweetest Arrowhead’s current four-year championship streak. That’s because of the difficult road the Warhawks took to get to this summit – including clawing from behind against the lone undefeated team in Wisconsin.
“Among the recent four, this is the top one,” Truttschel admitted after the trophy and medals ceremony that crowned his Warhawks for their four-peat. “I can’t tell you enough how this team probably has the biggest heart of the 10 years I’ve coached. They just know they’ve got to have each other’s backs.”
It looked dire early on for Arrowhead (17-6) as WNS (17-1) jumped out to an early 2-0 lead at 19 minutes, 52 seconds in the first half. The Wolfpack would build a 5-2 lead shortly after halftime when senior middie Izzi Mandli scored her second goal of the game at 21:06 in the second half.
Arrowhead took over from there, however, consistently winning draws and forcing turnovers en route to scoring five unanswered goals to finish the game.
With 10:29 left to play, sophomore middie Jacklyn Batley tied the game at five. Senior attack Lexy Chatham scored the go-ahead goal at the 5:54 mark, and senior attack Emily Dvorak added an insurance goal off a dish from Chatham 10 seconds later. Dvorak finished with two goals for the game.
“Emily is our Braveheart,” Truttschel said. “When we need somebody to take a nose to the goal, Emily is going to be that girl. Nobody can get that shiftiness and dodging around the goal like she can.”
Previous state titles may have been easier to come by, but many members of this championship Arrowhead team admitted having to come from behind made this victory especially special.
“When we started getting our goals and started getting our energy up, we could tell that they’re energy was going down, and we took advantage of that,” said Chatham, who earned her third state title along with fellow seniors Dvorak and goalie Amanda Catalano. “Without all the heart that went into this game, we wouldn’t have won, and it took every single person to do that.”
As for WNS, the team’s lone loss of the season came at the most inopportune time. Coach Meredith Donaldson said the team will struggle most to replace the seniors who helped launch the varsity program just three years ago. That’s especially true of Mandli, who slogged through that first JV season with a 1-10 record before leading the Wolfpack to back-to-back state championship games.
“She undoubtedly is the foundation of this program, Donaldson said. “She has been the most dedicated, passionate player I’ve ever coached.”
