The Hawken Hawks Girls lacrosse team hosted the NDCL Lions in the first round of the OHSAA playoffs on May 14 at Walton Stadium.
The Hawken Hawks Girls lacrosse team hosted the NDCL Lions in the first round of the OHSAA playoffs on May 14 at Walton Stadium.
The Hawks got out to an early 4-1 lead after one period of play and led 6-2 going into halftime.
Although the Lions outscored the Hawks, 5-4, in the second half, the Hawks held on to claim a 10-7 playoff victory.
Post-game, Hawken Head Coach James Newman said that the Hawks have improved greatly during the season as they have played a very challenging schedule.
One area of improvement which Newman believed helped the Hawks have success against the Lions was their ball movement on offense.
Coach Newman believed that the Hawks improvement in passing and finding open players led to the Hawks having a high scoring first half.
“We were really happy with the way that we were moving the ball on offense which led to a lot of goals which was pretty nice,” Newman said.
In addition to passing the ball well to find open players, Coach Newman said that the Hawks tried to get the ball to two attackers that were inside the 8 meter mark.
“On offense what we tried to do was put two players inside the 8m that are always cutting off one another to then look for some of those openings,” Newman said.
Implementing this game plan to perfection during the first half for the Hawks was senior Zoe Robinson. During the first half, Robinson had four goals.
Afterward, Robinson said that leading up to this playoff game the team worked on their off ball movement to get open in order to take a lot of shots on goal.
“Being open for that initial cut, and slipping in from behind my defender has been really key to me,” Robinson said. “Especially in this game, they left some spaces open, and I kind of used that to my advantage.”
Coach Newman said that for this game against the Lions, the coaching staff changed Robinson’s position to help give her a better opportunity to get open.
Newman said: “In our offensive set, we changed her position a little bit to give (Zoe), more of an opportunity to dodge from the side where she is super strong and make those types of shots and score goals. So I think we adjusted and tinkered with that offense a bit to then make it more successful.”
In addition to Robinson scoring five goals against the Lions, also contributing offensively for the Hawks were Ally Taylor (2 goals), Josie Culver (1), Mackenzie Ecker (1) and Kiera Levine (1).
Post-Game, senior captain Ally Taylor said that team was very motivated to play well against the Lions since they had lost to them earlier in the season. She emphasized that the Hawks played very cohesively against the Lions.
“We worked really well as team,” Taylor said. “We had a lot of great assists and goals that were just like charging in, so that was really great.”
In addition to the Hawks offense which focused on ball movement and strategic cuts toward the goal, the Hawks defense focused on playing closer to midfield to try and stop the Lions attack from cutting and getting open in the middle of the field.
“(Our defense tried to) not just run with them with our sticks parallel to them, but actually get up in front of them to stop (them from cutting across the middle),” Newman said.
By implementing this defensive strategy, Coach Newman believed that this strategy led the Hawks to greater success than in the first game against the Lions.
Coach Newman said that a key player for the Hawks on both offense and defense against the Lions was senior Kiera Levine.
“(Kiera) is super important to us in just controlling the game,” Newman said. “Taking the draw, winning the draw control is super huge and gives us an opportunity to be successful for sure. I think (Kiera) is great at doing that.
