Lady Wildcats Take Fourth Place in Hazelwood West Lacrosse Tournament

With seven minutes left in the April 2 Hazelwood West Girls Lacrosse Tournament third-place game, the host, the Lady Wildcats, trailed visiting Marquette High 6-5, but seemed poised to make a closing run that could pull out the victory.

Unfortunately for , it was the Mustangs that closed strong, scoring four times in the final six minutes, for a 10-6 win, to claim third place in one of the area’s best early season lacrosse showcases.

“We missed a lot of opportunities,” West High girls varsity lacrosse coach Mike Vaughn said. “Overall, as a team, we played very well, but it’s the small, minor mistakes, and not capitalizing on opportunities that we need to work on.”

One of those mistakes was an errant pass that led to a Marquette 5-on-3 player advantage, which eventually led to what proved to be the game-winning goal, on a close shot attempt by Mustang midfielder Abbey Heller.

That score made it 7-5 with 6:50 left. Less than a minute later, Marquette scored again to make it 8-5, and Hazelwood West knew it was in trouble.

“There were a couple of times where we had wide open people and we just didn’t pass the ball,” Vaughn said. “Or we had a shooter right in front of the goalie, and we just didn’t make the goal in, just a lot of missed opportunities, and Marquette played a good game.”

With about three minutes left in the game, Lady Wildcat sophomore Brittany Monroe broke past two Marquette defenders and ripped a shot past Marquette goalkeeper Amy Porta to make the score 8-6.

But that was as close as West would get, as Marquette scored two more goals in the final two minutes to close out the 10-6 win.

“They’re a good team,” Vaughn said. “We knew that coming in, and we needed to capitalize on our own opportunities more than we did.”

Junior midfielder Rianne Holzmeyer scored a game-high three goals for West, while teammates Krysta Swalley and Stephanie Baker added a goal apiece, along with Monroe’s tally to account for the Lady Wildcat scores.

For Marquette, Renee Abrolat scored three goals, while Heller and Jeni Slane had two goals each, and Shelby Ellis, Lauren Wellman, and Olivia Schulte each added a single tally in the Mustangs’ first win of the season.

Hazelwood West fell to 1-4 on the season, but will get the chance to improve its record on April 5, when the Lady Wildcats will travel to Wentzville Holt High for a 4 p.m. non-conference contest.

The Lady Wildcats’ next home game is a rematch against Marquette, on Thursday, April 7. West will then close out the week with a home game against Parkway North High, on Friday, April 8.

Both those home matches will be played at Wildcat Field, and are slated for 4:15 p.m. starts.