During the first half of Arrowhead Red’s game against the Whitefish Bay/Nicolet/Shorewood (WNS) girls lacrosse team Monday night, the Warhawks’ undefeated record against in-state opponents appeared to be in jeopardy.
The next 25 minutes proved that was just a fluke.
Arrowhead Red held WNS to just one goal and senior attack Jacklyn Batley scored two of her game-high five goals in the second half to carry the Warhawks to a 10-5 victory over the Wolfpack at Whitefish Bay High School. By winning the CoolStick Girls Game of the Week, Arrowhead Red finished the season undefeated Wisconsin. The Warhawks also claimed their 12th Classic 8 – Black title in 13 years with a 9-0 record.
“We always know whenever we play WNS that they’re going to be ready for Arrowhead,” Arrowhead Red coach Tom Truttschel said.
That was certainly the case in the first half as Arrowhead Red (12-3) received all it could handle from WNS (10-3). The squads entered halftime knotted at four, with Batley leading the Warhawks by scoring three of her five goals for the game.
Senior attack Lindsay Tazalla added two goals for the Wolfpack and assisted on another when freshman middie Olivia Gscheidmeier tied the score with 6 minutes, 28 seconds left in the first half.
“I think we came in obviously knowing that they are a really good team, and we respected that they’re a really good team,” Batley said. “But we also knew that we can push ourselves to be better and that’s what we did today.”
WNS notched one more tie in the second half when senior middie Aubrey McLaren scored her second goal of the game at 17:25 in the second half to bring the score to 5-5. The Warhawk defense took over from there, shutting out the Wolfpack with an impenetrable backer zone defense that minimized the man-to-man mismatches WNS exploited in the first half.
“We practice both a lot, so once we went to backer, we didn’t have those couple mismatches that we had in the first half and really shut them down,” Truttschel said.
As another season comes to an end, Arrowhead Red has earned another No. 1 seed for the state tournament. The freshmen that led the Warhawks to their fifth consecutive state championship — like attack Kylee Manser, who had three goals of her own on Monday night — have another year of experience, making Arrowhead Red as formidable as ever.
“Because those freshmen are now sophomores, they are a little bit more mature in their decision-making, so that helps with less mistakes,” Truttschel said. “They all work together really strongly.”
Arrowhead Red and WNS are off until the postseason starts next week. The brackets for the state and invitational tournaments will be released Thursday.
Every week, WisconsinLacrosse.com will highlight a select girls lacrosse game in Wisconsin. Made possible by a donation from CoolStick.
