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Sports

Marines Victors in Battle of The Undefeated

Long Beach girls' lacrosse retains flawless conference record, turning back East Meadow 15-6.

The Long Beach girls’ lacrosse team had a surprise for home team East Meadow on Thursday, in a showdown conference battle that pitted the last two teams with undefeated records in Conference 2A.

East Meadow hit a brick wall.

The Marines proved too much for the Jets, as Long Beach utilized a stunning transition game and harrying defensive stick work to keep the home team off balance and post a 15-6 win.

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The loss dropped East Meadow (4-1, 5-7 overall) into a tie for second with MacArthur, leaving Long Beach alone atop Conference 2A with a 6-0, 9-4 record overall — and one win away from winning the conference championship outright.

“We’re not used to playing on grass, and we knew East Meadow would be a good, athletic team,” said Long Beach head coach Rachel Ray. “But we came in with high expectations.”

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“Going in we thought we’d have a tight game,” said East Meadow head coach Colleen McMahon wistfully. “We just didn’t bring out best today.”

The tone of the game was established early. After the first goal for East Meadow, the Lady Mariners were off and running, and had East Meadow on their heels — reeling off four goals within six minutes before the Lady Jets knew what hit them.

East Meadow managed to eke out a second point on a foul shot, but then Long Beach attacker Jillian Piazza (6 goals, 2 assist) went on a scoring rampage, using her compact size and quickness to turn on defenders and net three of her six goals on the day.

She was joined by senior captain Emily McLaughlin, (3 goals, 1 assist) whose opportunity to score came on a devastatingly quick transition game that caught East Meadow unprepared.

The second half was more of the same. While the Jets fought to the bitter end — including seniors Ryan Meyer and Jessica Widmann (3 goals, 1 assist) turning in particularly determined efforts — on this day it was a matter of one undefeated team proving too much for the other.

Long Beach head coach Rachel Ray credited the transition game for the win. But the Marines’ ability to effectively disrupt the potent Jets offense through effective check work proved key to the victory. Drive after drive faltered for East Meadow when a Long Beach defender adroitly reached out and knocked the ball out of a Jet’s stick.

“We’ve been working on letting the offensive player come to us, and not just run up swinging,” Ray said.

“We turned the ball over way too much,” McMahon said. “They were more aggressive than what we are used to.”

Long Beach’s Elyse Stark registered 9 saves, while East Meadow’s Vanessa DePasquale had 10 saves, some from point blank range.

In addition to Piazza and McLoughlin, Liz Rourke scored 3 goals for the Mariners, and four other players scored, including Melissa Rubin, Patricia Murphy, Mollie Medrano and Molly Martin.

Long Beach rounds out the regular season with a non-league visit to Floral Park on May 7, followed by a second conference showdown, hosting MacArthur on May 10 at the Long Beach Middle School. Game time is 4:45 p.m.

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