By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
LINWOOD — The Ocean City girls lacrosse team found itself in a dogfight with rival Mainland Regional through the first half of Wednesday’s Cape-Atlantic League regular-season matchup. But after halftime, the Red Raiders’ offense bared its teeth and went on a 6-1 run to cruise to a 17-8 win over the Mustangs.
Mainland trailed just 5-3 heading into the second half, but Ocean City scored four straight goals to take a commanding 9-3 lead. Four different players scored during the run, including Lexie Sharp, Rialee Allen, Danielle Donoghue and Emily DiMarino.
“We knew we had to come out and play hard in the second half no matter what. We couldn’t take our foot off the pedal and take anything for granted. We were pretty prepared for everything that was thrown at us,” Sharp said. “Our defense came out strong, like they usually do. I know I can trust them and that they have my back and my teammates’ backs. They are unstoppable back there.”
Ocean City (10-1, 5-0 CAL) took an early 1-0 lead when Donoghue took possession on a restart and pushed ahead before passing to Allen for the game’s first tally. Moments later, Mainland (6-3, 5-1) tied the game when Molly O’Shea, a junior, scored her 100th career goal. The teams traded goals again before the Red Raiders went up, 4-2, on goals by Allen and Donoghue. Again the Mustangs responded, slicing the lead to 4-3 when Victoria Meade found the back of the net against freshman goalie Abbey Fenton with a little more than 10 minutes left before halftime.
But Fenton, younger sister of senior midfielder Nicholl Fenton, was stingy and didn’t allow another goal until midway through the second half. She finished with five saves, while Mainland’s Ciara Reeves tallied nine.
“Abbey is amazing. She steps up for us every game and we owe a lot to her. She blocks so many shots and that helps us out so much as a team,” DiMarino said. “We were just trying to regroup and refocus (at halftime), and putting all of our energy into never giving up in this game. We knew we had to give it our all and never let up.”
“They are always a different team than everybody else because they are one of the hardest working teams we play,” Shannon O’Reilly said of the Mustangs. “They don’t stop until the end, so that’s always a challenge for us to keep playing until the end. We knew we needed to kick it into gear and player our game in the second half.”
Ocean City certainly found an extra gear in the second half, ripping off 12 goals. Mainland cut the deficit to 11-6 when Megan McIntyre-Bozzi fed Gab Cohen for a score with 9:25 remaining, but that’s as close as the Mustangs got, as Ocean City answered Mainland’s final two goals with goals of its own before closing out the game with a four-goal spurt in the final three minutes.
“We have so many scoring threats on our team. It’s so hard to shut down just one player because there are so many other players who are threats, too,” Sharp said. “We have Anna Devlin and she’s really stepped up this year, Emily and Danielle as sophomores, I think everyone is coming together this year and working as a team. Our confidence is pretty high right now. It’s exciting to see what the rest of our season might hold.”
Allen finished with five goals for Ocean City, while DiMarino added four goals and three assists. Sharp had four goals and Donoghue chipped in with two goals and four assists. Mainland got two goals each from Cohen, O’Shea and Robin Spector.
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acgloryday.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays