KINGSTON — Two halves told two very different stories in Monday’s District 2 Class 2A girls lacrosse semifinal between Crestwood and Wyoming Seminary.
Sem pushed the Comets through the first two quarters, only trailing by two goals heading into halftime.
In the second half, Crestwood woke up and turned into the giant it’s been for so many years, running away from the Blue Knights straight to their sixth straight appearance in the District 2 title game.
The Comets ripped off 10 straight goals spanning from the closing minutes of the second quarter well into the fourth and clinched a championship berth with a 20-11 win over Wyoming Seminary at Klassner Field.
The win also ensures that Crestwood will head back to the state tournament for a second straight season, with District 2 sending its top two teams to the Class 2A tournament.
Freshman Nyla Knorr had eight goals for Crestwood and Gia Caporuscio scored seven times and added a pair of assists.
Caporuscio’s final three goals came in a 20-second window late in the fourth quarter. After serving a two-minute penalty, Crestwood’s leading scorer came back into play and promptly slammed the door shut on Wyoming Seminary.
“I think they [Seminary] scored one or two, so I knew I had to get those goals back for my team,” Caporuscio said.
Hers was the third Crestwood penalty of the final quarter, and the Blue Knights did score twice with the extra player out there to make it a 16-10 game midway through the fourth.
Those penalties were just about the only blemishes on an otherwise spotless second half for Crestwood. The Comets stretched a 9-7 halftime lead out to 16-7 before Seminary could stop the bleeding, holding the Blue Knights scoreless entirely in the third quarter.
“I think we just locked in a little bit more. We had a little talk about some tactical things we needed to square away,” Crestwood head coach Russ Kile said. “We’re still building, which I love … we still have a lot of growth to experience.”
The Comets tightened up their ball control and cut down on some errant passes that helped Wyoming Seminary dictate a lot of the action in the opening half.
Ellie Kersey’s third goal of the game gave the Blue Knights a 7-6 lead with 5:46 left in the second quarter, but that was the last time Sem would hold a lead.
Knorr tied the game up a couple minutes later, and Caporuscio scored twice in the final minute and change of the half.
In her biggest game in a Crestwood uniform to date, Knorr’s speed and shiftiness with the ball in her stick was a real difference-maker as the Comets established themselves.
The freshman scored five of Crestwood’s first seven goals before ultimately ending the day with eight. She scored six times without the benefit of an assist, creating her own shots and burying them time after time.
“Going into it, we really wanted to read the defense and I think what was working was we were creating lanes for each other,” Knorr said. “We were working as a team really well together.”
Jordan Andrews added a hat trick for Crestwood as well as a team-high three assists. Gabby Carlin and Addy Knorr scored one goal each.
Kersey and Nat DeNaples both scored five times for Wyoming Seminary, who end its season with a record of 16-3 including the postseason.
Next up will be a familiar foe for Crestwood in the District 2 Class 2A title game, as the Comets will meet Abington Heights for the fourth straight year in the finals.
Abington Heights, a 17-4 winner over Lake-Lehman in Monday’s other semifinal, will host the district championship game on Thursday at 5 p.m.
