By Avonlea Cummings
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
The Needham Rockets hosted Milton High on Thursday, May 9 for their eighth Bay State Conference game of the season. The Rockets held a powerful presence on the field that propelled them to a dominant 16-2 win over the Milton Wildcats. Needham now holds a 7-5 record for the regular season with only five games left to go.
In the first quarter, Needham put points up early on the scoreboard. With about five minutes of the quarter left, Needham was already driving a three-point lead. Needham went onto close this quarter with this three point lead.
Milton would be the first to strike in the second, just over a minute and a half into the quarter making the score 3-1. Needham’s Lila Jantzen struck the back of Milton’s net first for Needham, tallying another point. The Rockets fueled their momentum and netted four more goals in the quarter, closing the half 8-1.
More than halfway into the third quarter, neither team had yet to put additional points on the board. Regardless of the ticking time, Needham’s Lily Schmalz would be the first on the field to make a some noise, knocking in another point for the Rockets at 5:50. The girls were working fearlessly on the field, overpowering Milton for the rest of the quarter, and polished off the third 12-1.
Needham bolted to the net once again in the fourth and put on another tally early into the quarter. Needham passed the ball in circles around Milton, and at 4:31 Rockets’ freshman Frankie Adams ripped a shot into Mitlon’s net and the Needham girls went wild in celebration of Adams’ first varsity goal.
Running off the high of such a successful game, the Rockets went on to score another point to tally, but Milton had the last say in the game finishing the night with their second goal of the evening finalizing the score 16-2.
Head coach Anne Quigley was pleased with the team’s efforts in the evening’s competition and hopes the girls carry the momentum as they finish out the regular season: “It was a huge goal of ours to come hard with a lot of intensity. We had a large fan base tonight with Needham Youth Lacrosse here so we wanted to step up and show what this program is about to them. A huge goal for us was to shut down their attack and I hope we can keep going with that against Foxboro,” said Quigley.
