The captains of the Mercer Island girls lacrosse team made no bones about their goal to make a state-finals run at the beginning of the 2016 season. This year’s roster features 16 returners from a team that won eight straight games before dropping its final two contests last season, including a 9-8 loss to Snohomish in the opening round of the state tournament.
“It was certainly a game we shouldn’t have lost,” Mercer Island coach Liz Shields said. “So the girls are working hard and definitely looking to go further into the playoffs this time.”
Though the Islanders have seen their share of ups and downs this year, they still maintain that same goal. Now in the final week of the regular season, the Islanders are looking to make one final push as the postseason nears.
Getting four goals and two assists from midfielder Katie Brodsky, Mercer Island beat Overlake 19-3 Friday in Redmond, winning back-to-back games for the first time this year.
The Islanders (6-4, 3-1 in Alki league) maintained control throughout Friday’s contest. Mercer Island scored the first four goals of Friday’s game, with three coming from Maille Moll, and led 12-1 at the half.
Leah Paborsky scored five goals in the winning effort against Overlake (4-6, 2-3 in Snoqualmie league). Moll finished with four goals and one assist and Holly Waggoner scored twice while racking up a whopping nine assists. Goalkeeper Allie Dunbar had five saves in the net. To go with her six total points, Brodsky also won five draw controls.
Brodsky, a sophomore committed to play lacrosse at Arizona State University, said last year’s state tournament loss to Snohomish pushed her to work harder to help her team advance further into the state tournament.
“Our goal ultimately was to win state and still is, and we just need to keep that in mind,” Brodsky said. “That’s something that we should really keep in the back of our head and always try to push ourselves in practice.”
With two games remaining, including one more league game, the Islanders could place as high as second in their division with a win over Holy Names (1-2-1, 2-7-1) when the two teams square off at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Mercer Island High School.
Five of Mercer Island’s six wins this season have been by double-digits or more. Conversely, only one of the team’s four losses has been by a double-digit margin, a 17-5 loss to Issaquah in the Islanders’ second game of the year.
“We’ve had a couple games where we haven’t had particularly strong second halves this season,” Shields said. “We’ve played really strong and been in a good position going into the second half and then we have a mental block or a mental breakdown and it kind of falls apart. So we’ve been working on doing all the little things all the way for the entire game rather than just for a half.”
Brodsky noted that she thought Mercer Island capitalized on facing softer competition last season. She said she was encouraged by her team’s play against the stronger teams the Islanders faced this year.
Mercer Island will have another reason to make this year’s playoff run as memorable as possible: at the beginning of the year, Shields alerted her players she’ll be stepping down as coach at season’s end after leading the team for six years.
“We definitely want to go past the first round. It’s my last season, so we want to go all the way,” Shields said with a laugh. “We’ll see what kind of send-off they’ll want to give me.”
