Dutch rip regional rivals

GUILDERLAND — “Guilderland girls don’t get tired.”

That is the Lady Dutch lacrosse team motto, according to junior Jen Madsen. And with two more wins in the past week, the Guilderland squad won’t be able to get tired.

The Lady Dutch are regional champs — and remained unbeaten with a 22-0 record — after defeating Lakeland-Panas of Section I, 13-4, last Wednesday and then beating Kingston of Section IX, 19-3, in Kingston on Sunday.

Guilderland will play in the state semifinals on Friday at 2:30 p.m. at the State Univeristy of New York College at Cortland. With a win, the Lady Dutch will play the next day in the state championship game.

“Everyone stepped up,” Guilderland Coach Gary Chatnik said after last Wednesday’s game. “Everyone played great. We played excellent team defense. This is the regionals. We expected a tough game. We played hard until the end.”

Guilderland scored the first two goals of the game — one by Jen Madsen with an assist from Danielle Tetreault and the other an unassisted tally by Chelsey Newman — but Lakeland came back to tie the game with 12:05 left in the opening half.

Jessica Curran and Chelsea Robinson each scored for Lakeland to tie the game.

It was the closest the Rebels would get in this contest.

Wide open

The Lady Dutch responded to the Rebels’ charge but scoring the next six goals to open up the game and take an 8-2 lead at halftime.

Courtney Davis scored the first goal of the run with an assist from Newman. Abbey Fashouer scored with an assist from Tetreault and Madsen scored an unanswered goal with 5:49 left in the half to lead 5-2.

Madsen scored her third goal of the game and Davis scored her second with an assist from Amanda Best. Tetreault finally scored a goal of her own with an unassisted tally with one minute left in the opening frame.

Lakeland-Panas didn’t score another goal until 13:18 remained in the second half. Robinson scored her second goal to make the score 11-3 at that point.

Best scored an unassisted goal, Davis had three tallies in the contest, and Kristin Cagino scored with an assist from Madsen in the second half before Lakeland scored again.

Caitlin Collins scored for Lakeland but Guilderland added two more tallies to round out the scoring.

Newman scored on a free position after a Lakeland foul and Bridget Daley scored with an assist from Newman to set off a wild celebration.

Lakeland had beaten the Lady Dutch in this round of the playoffs last year.

Guilderland goalie Amanda Santandrea had to make only three saves as the Lady Dutch maintained possession of the ball for long stretches of the game, forcing Lakeland to play a ton of defense.

“This is the game we’ve been looking for all year,” Madsen said. “We wanted to get back here and we wanted to play them and beat them. This is the next step for this team and the program.”

Going further

In Sunday’s game, Tetreault scored six goals and assisted on two others to lead the Lady Dutch offense.

Madsen scored three more and added two assists, Davis tallied twice and assisted on one, Daley scored two goals, and Newman scored one goal and had one assist. Alli DeRizzo, Casey Gerety, Fashouer, Best, and Lauren Cagino each scored one goal for Guilderland.

Santandrea stopped nine shots for the Lady Dutch to pace the defense.

The Dutch jumped out to a huge lead and at the halftime intermission were up by 14 goals, 15-1.

“Last year we came into this game just happy to be here,” Chatnik said of the regional round. “This year we have more experience. The girls were determined to get past regionals. This year they wanted to go further.”

Last year’s loss was motivation for a young but old Lady Dutch squad.

“We’re old in experience,” Chatnik said. “This year we were more prepared for this round. The girls came out and competed hard since day one.”

Though they have worked hard all year to get to the state semifinals, Madsen feels the team has some more work to do.

“We work on our stick skills and getting them to perfection,” she said. “We’re not perfect, yet; but we are close.”