Girls Closing in on LAX Championship

The next round of the Division 2 Girls Lacrosse playoffs are set for tonight at Hampton High School and Chartiers Valley will face Shaler at 7:30 p.m. in the semifinals. The winner will face either North Hills or Bethel Park in the championship game.

This certainly has been a different year for the Lady Colts lacrosse team.

A new attitude and a new energetic young head coach have been a big factor in the team’s resurgence.

"Our new coach has really helped us a lot," junior center Taylor Ondyke said. “We have practiced really hard.”

It is easy to see why the Lady Colts have landed in the semifinals by putting in the time and effort required to get to this level. However, they feel as if they have to reach a higher level to advance to the WPIAL Championship game. 

"We have to kick it into overdrive from this point on,” head coach Julie Gould said. “We have had too many mistakes in execution.”

While there have been many keys to this run for the Lady Colts, their ability to play a match before the postseason started may have paid big dividends. The Lady Colts feel as if their ability to be a close knit group has been a key to their success as well.

"We had the chance to play Peters Township before the post-season started and it showed us where some of our weaknesses were," Gould said.

The results from this have certainly been evident, the Lady Colts have not only been winning, but they have been doing so in convincing fashion. The Lady Colts have wins against Yough 19-0, Greensburg Salem 15-1 and Baldwin 14-6 in recent games. That gives them confidence that they have a championship quality to be able to put opponents away when they have the chance.

And one reason they have been able to defeat opponents with relative ease is their conditioning.

"Our preseason conditioning program has really helped us," Ondyke said.