BURTONSVILLE — North County girls lacrosse started the season losing its first seven games. However, playing some of the state’s best competition in Anne Arundel County, the Knights didn’t get discouraged.
They responded with six straight victories leading up to Friday evening’s Class 4A state semifinal against Urbana.
While the No. 8 seed Knights scored the game’s opening goal, the No. 4 Hawks responded with a barrage of 10 straight to break the game open and ultimately closed out a 17-6 win. Urbana will face No. 3 Broadneck next week at Stevenson University’s Mustang Stadium for the 4A state title.
Although the loss ended the Knights’ season, Friday night offered another glimpse of growth for a program that before last year had not made the state semifinals since 1993.
“This is two years in a row that we’ve done this, so that’s a big accomplishment,” North County coach David Mueller said. “We started off struggling and then came back and did this. We play in one of the hardest counties in the state for public school competition. We’re a young team, we had only two seniors that started. We’ve got almost everybody coming back, so we’ll go back, start all over and see what we can do next year.”
Junior midfielder Maggie Blanford started the game off strongly for the Knights with an aggressive dodge to the cage. However, Urbana mounted an immediate answer and then brought relentless defensive pressure. Turnovers began to pile up for North County as the Hawks swarmed defensively with double teams. Urbana continually pushed the pace off the mistakes and thrived in transition.
North County was held scoreless for 17:25 in the first half, spanning from the game’s opening minute to the midway portion of the second quarter. Senior attacker Paige White led the charge for the Hawks, splitting North County defenders with precision and rocketing shots past Mikayla Petersen.
“We made too many mistakes in the beginning of the game,” Mueller said. “Unforced turnovers, we just can’t have that against a team like this.”
The Knights found some life late in the first half after Urbana was called for a yellow card. Roxy Stephenson scored twice, while Riley Sheets added a goal, bringing the Knights within six. However, they couldn’t sustain that momentum and were called for a yellow card of their own shortly after. Urbana’s attack took advantage and pushed the halftime advantage to eight.
A running clock was implemented for much of the second half with the Hawks up 10 goals. Even with the lopsided deficit, every minute proved invaluable for the younger Knights. Petersen, the junior goalie, didn’t waver in the face of continued shot attempts. Stephenson, a sophomore, battled in the draw circle, while several other returning North County players earned high value postseason minutes.
Mueller hopes the young Knights can take valuable lessons from the experience.
“For a lot of them that were on the team last year, this is their second year,” Mueller said. “They just need to know that they need to work hard every day in practice. You just can’t come out and expect to be here at the end of the year. It takes a lot of hard work and our girls have done that. A lot of them have played in the winter, which has really helped us. For junior varsity and varsity, we had 33 girls total, which isn’t a lot. We’ve just got to work harder than anyone else to get to the next level and I expect these girls to do that.”
Urbana — 5 7 3 2 — 17
North County — 1 3 1 1 — 6
Goals: U- Paige White 4, Reagan McKenney 4, Colby Johnson 2, Josey Hines 2, Cora Betten 2, Morgan Sherwood, Lilli Pontius, Cameron Johnson; NC- Roxy Stephenson 2, Riley Sheets 2, Maggie Blanford, Madison Feuerherd. Assists: U- Hines 2, Pontius; NC- Taylor Price 2, Blanford 1, Katie von Berg, Macy White. Saves: U- Paige Brown 1, Abby Tanner 1; NC- Mikayla Petersen 11.
