Mount Greylock Girls Edge Wahconah

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires.com Sports
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- There has been very little separating the Mount Greylock and Wahconah girls lacrosse teams over the years.
 
On Friday, it was a very big performance by Mounties sophomore Christy Rech. 
 
Rech stopped 18 shots in goal, and Tess Leveque broke an 8-8 tie with 1 minute, 23 seconds remaining to give Mount Greylock a 9-8 win on John T. Allen Field.
 
“If I had to say the difference in that game, it was the goalie,” Wahconah coach Kathy Budaj said. “And I think what happened is, I think she got in their heads a little bit. I know probably for Jilly Cote, when she hit the post [late], that didn’t help, mentally.”
 
Mount Greylock captain Carolyn Jones, who scored a game-high four goals, agreed that Rech was a key to the win.
 
“She’s so good,” Jones said. “We talk about so much in practice about how awesome of a keeper she is and how consistent she is. They had a slew of like eight free positions in a row, and she did a great job stopping them all.
 
“She’s doing amazingly, and only for a 10th-grader, it’s going to be awesome to see how she develops.”
 
Friday’s game was starting to develop into a Wahconah runaway when it got back-to-back goals from Cote and Chloe Accardi to take a 5-2 lead midway through the second quarter.
 
But Jones scored an unassisted goal in the last minute of the half and another early in the third quarter to get Mount Greylock within one.
 
Then Ainsley Abel scored with an assist from Emma Polumbo to tie it with 8:06 left in the third.
 
That is where it stood for the next 4-½ minutes as neither defense yielded a goal.
 
Finally, Cote slipped a bounce shot past Rech to start a back-and-forth fourth quarter that saw neither team lead by more than a goal.
 
With just fewer than four minutes to play, Mount Greylock’s Gianna Pesce made a move to the goal from the right wing and beat Wahconah’s Sydney Smith (four saves) to put the Mounties up, 8-7.
 
But at the other end, Hannah Bowlby (three goals, two assists) set up Kaeli Talora for the tying goal with 1:37 on the clock.
 
Mount Greylock won the draw, and rather than slow things down and shorten the game, the Mounties went right on the attack.
 
“Tessa [Leveque] was wide open,” Jones said. “They were definitely figuring that I was going to take it to net, so when Sarah got the draw, Tessa was wide open, and Sarah was able to make a great pass to her and see that she was open. And Tessa was able to sink it, which was awesome.”
 
Wahconah was not able to get off a shot on its last possession, and the Mounties were able to run out the clock in their offensive zone. When the final whistle sounded, they charged to the other end to get their goalie, grinning from ear to ear.
 
And for the first time in a long time, everyone could see the grins.
 
“We learned the mask rules were changing a bit today, and we’re really excited to get some normal lacrosse back,” Jones said. “It was such a nice day. We got a fair amount of fans to come out. It was awesome.
 
“It’s so much better running without the mask. It is so much better. We were talking about how it feels weird. We feel naked without the masks on, but it’s so nice.”
 
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