ITEM PHOTO BY KATIE MORRISON
Fenwick’s Colbi Flickinger and St. Mary’s Nikki Bendickson vie for a loose ball.
By KATIE MORRISON
PEABODY — The Bishop Fenwick girls lacrosse team took the lead early and never relinquished it on its home turf, taking down visiting Catholic Central League rival St. Mary’s, 12-5, on Tuesday. Molly Camelo had a big offensive game for the Crusaders (2-0) with five goals, while a total of six Fenwick players found the back of the net.
“We started out the game how we wanted, then leveled out for a bit there, but we made the adjustments we needed to,” said first-year Fenwick coach Bridget Dullea. “We possessed the ball longer and did a much better job in the second half, and I was happy with that.”
Fran Carpinella had two goals and one assist, while Hannah Durkin and Maddy Bethune each had one goal and two assists. Meg Carney and Brigid Waldron each scored one goal and Colbi Flickinger had one assist.
For the Spartans (1-1), Codi Butt led the way with two goals, while Liz Weisse had one goal and one assist. Sarah Ryan had one goal and Riley Lynch had one assist.
St. Mary’s, who was coming off a big 17-6 win over CCL foe Arlington Catholic in which seven players scored, didn’t quite have the offensive firepower in its second game, but coach KC Butt still liked what she saw from her team.
“I’m pretty happy with how the girls played today,” said Butt, who was missing some players due to injury. “We have some new girls out there who haven’t really played the game before, and to see what they were able to do against a quality program like (Fenwick) makes me really excited for what’s to come. We’re just going to build on this.”
The Crusaders came out firing to open the game, with Camelo notching two goals within the first 1:15 of action. The Spartans answered back with a goal from Ryan, but Fenwick put up two more goals over the next two minutes to keep the lead at two goals. With about 14 minutes left, Butt got the Spartans on the board and then put another one in six minutes later to cut it to 4-3 and give the Spartans some momentum. But Fenwick was able to slow the momentum when Bethune scored on an assist from Durkin with just over a minute to play in the half, putting the score at 5-3 going into the break.
“We made a lot of good plays early to keep ourselves in it, but turnovers hurt us in the end,” said Butt. “We turned it over, didn’t win ground balls, and couldn’t make some of the small plays that we needed to make to win this one. We’ve still got plenty to work on.”
The second half is when the Crusaders were able to pull away. They came out hot again to start the half when Waldron put one in the net less than two minutes in. After St. Mary’s scored again to make it 6-4, Fenwick went on a 5-0 run over the next 12 minutes of play to blow the game open. Turnovers got the better of the Spartans and Fenwick was able to take advantage, running away with its second win of the year.
“This is how we wanted to start off the year and this definitely helps with our confidence,” Dullea said of the team’s solid start. “Hopefully we can keep this going through our week of practice and into our game on Friday and then beyond.”
Up next for the Crusaders will be a home game against Mystic Valley on Friday afternoon, while the Spartans will take on Salem on Saturday afternoon.