By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP — Franklin Williams, Egg Harbor Township’s girls lacrosse coach, said he would try to get some sleep tonight. But that might be a tough task. It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours for the Eagles’ skipper.
Last night, Williams’ wife, Holly, gave birth to the couple’s second child, Franklin Williams IV, and this afternoon the coach led his team to a dominating, 15-1 season-opening win over visiting Absegami.
“My wife made me come (to the game today),” Williams said. “It feels real good. It’s a good day for me. We have the JV to watch, then I’m going home to look after the baby all night.”
Williams told the team after practice on Monday that junior varsity coach Jana Reilly was in charge for the time being until his wife gave birth.
“I gave them a plan on Monday because I knew I was going out right at the end of practice Monday night, and they basically ran practice by themselves. My JV coach came in and watched them, and they did everything I asked them to do in practice and it just came right into the game, seamlessly. The movement on the field, the passing, all of that,” Williams said.
“We didn’t think he was going to be here. We’re so excited,” said senior Jess Sheffer, who led the way with three goals and three assists. “We’re proud of ourselves (for practicing on our own), and he’s proud of us. I think it was a good omen for him to have the baby. It’s like a present.”
“It’s been a good couple of days for us,” said fellow senior Erin Hogan. “It’s been kind of difficult. We’ve been inside because of the rain, so we’ve been hard-pressed to get good practices in. But I think we definitely made good use of the time we had. Riley was our coach yesterday. She’s hard on us, but we need that. She keeps us motivated. We didn’t think (Williams) was going to be here today, so that was definitely a boost.”
Egg Harbor Township had an outstanding year last spring, at one point ripping off 14 straight wins. The team returns plenty of talent, which was on display early. The Eagles jumped out to 7-0 lead, then stretched their lead to 12-0 by halftime. They looked sharp defensively, too, as junior goalie Mia Monacelli made several good saves to keep the shutout going into halftime. Absegami scored a late goal Caroline Kelly, but that was all Monacelli allowed.
“She was underrated all of last year. She had a fantastic year last year, but she was kind of overshadowed by Georgia (Turner) of A.C. I mean, she was phenomenal and is playing in college now,” Williams said. “Now it’s Mia’s turn. She’s only a junior, so she still has a couple of years left.”
“We rocked it on defense. Our defense is amazing. We worked really hard on our defense in practice, like crashing (the net) and cutting off passes, and we saw that today,” Sheffer added. “We played with Georgia on a travel team, and Mia grew up playing with her, too. Now she’s on that level, so we’re excited for her, and she still has next year, too.”
EHT players and coaches alike have a lot of optimism for this season, and getting off to a hot start definitely helps. Hogan and Angelica Dagit each added three goals while Tiffany Trivers and Olivia Elwell chipped in with two each.
“We’re looking to compete for the CAL. We returned every starter except for two from last year. The team is hungry and they are ready to compete,” Williams said. “We have a few sophomores floating around, a lot of juniors and a balance of some seniors. We also have some good freshmen coming up.”
“I’m so excited. I was thinking earlier how grateful I am for this group of girls to be together with this being my last year. We’ve played together for six or seven years, this group of us. There’s no better way to start our year,” Sheffer said. “I feel like we are more relaxed and confident this year. Last year, we were kind of getting to know each other on the high school level more. It was kind of a developmental year. So, this year we’re really confident and relaxed. We’re excited to play teams like Mainland and Ocean City, and we have a big game against Cherokee on Saturday.”
“We’ve been growing as a team through my four years here. We lost a lot of people, especially my freshman and sophomore years. Last year, we didn’t graduate that many, so this is definitely our chance to show our talent as a team,” Hogan added. “It helped that in the preseason we played Cherry Hill East, which we were evenly matched with, and we played Eastern, and they are up there. They give us a challenge and that prepares us for the season. Even though some of the girls might dread it because we know it’s going to be a hard game, but that gets us working on our defense and I think that helped us a lot, especially with (Absegami’s) transitions. We were able to hold them to one goal.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays