Baldwin clicking in all facets

If a team is 8-0 overall and 5-0 in conference play, it’s not a stretch outside the imagination to call it strong.
“We’re off to a pretty good start, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Baldwin girls’ lacrosse coach Rebecca LaFlare said.
Last year’s team had no seniors, so that means everyone returned with plenty of experience under their collective belt. That, and Isaac Newtown’s First Law of Physics: something in motion will remain in motion; summer and winter leagues kept the players fresh beyond the regular varsity season, and Baldwin is reaping the benefits with a well-balanced scoring output.
“Being together more definitely benefitted us,” LaFlare said. “We have a lot more girls scoring, taking the initiative, not just like one or two girls [scoring] but like four or five girls scoring each game so that’s definitely helping us this season. Last year it was like two main people pretty much scoring all of our goals.”
The main scorers who take the cake on the offense are freshman midfielder Kaitlin Timmes, senior midfielder Emma Ryan, sophomore attacker CJ Keryc, sophomore attacker Ava Jerome and freshman attacker Sophie Sorensen. With all of these scorers, the assists are accentuated by the team, deemed just as important as the effort to net the ball.

In last Friday’s 13-7 victory at Hewlett, Timmes had six goals, Ryan a hat trick, Jerome two goals, Keryc one and senior Nina Randazzo one.
“No one’s being selfish, we all have the same mentality, we all want to win,” LaFlare explained. “They have more confidence in each other, they’re not worried that someone’s going to drop [the ball], they know that someone’s going to get the ball if they need it or hustle to it if it does fall, so I think it’s just having more confidence in one another.”
On the opposite end of the field, in goal, Baldwin has senior Megan Englehart (8 saves in the win over Hewlett) starting in goal, with junior backup Briana Maisonet getting her playing time too.
“[Megan has been doing amazing, she really stepped it up this year,” LaFlare said. “She’s been talking much more on the defense, I think the girls have much more confidence in her also because she like found her voice in the cage and they know that they can rely on her if it gets past them, and her clears have come such a long way.”
The defenders in front of the goaltenders has been pulling their weight, too. Leading the way are seniors Sienna Hardy, Alexis Lakeram, Reyna Palmer and Celisa Beniot.
“Our defense was strong last year and they’re even stronger this year,” LaFlare said. “They work so well with one another and they have so much heart, they’re literally the heart of our team. They put so much work into it when the ball is on their end, so I’m very grateful for all of them.”
To tie all parts of the field together, up next for the team to focus on cleaning up is their transition game, getting the ball from defense down to attack.
“I feel like our defense will definitely do so much work and then we kind of just throw it away so just our timing on our goal presence and making sure we’re getting the goal and not throwing it away,” LaFlare said.