Westminster wins second lacrosse title

By Jeff Haws

For the AJC

After letting a big lead get away Wednesday, Westminster didn’t want to leave anything to chance with the state title on the line.

The Wildcats controlled the action from the opening draw, taking a nine-goal halftime lead and running with it to defeat Holy Innocents’ 19-6 and earn their second consecutive Class A-AAAA girls lacrosse title.

Meanwhile, in Class AAAAA, Milton’s girls continued their dominance, shutting out Roswell in the second half en route to a 25-6 win. Annie Ruland scored a game-high seven goals for the Eagles, and teammate Lydia Cassada added six. The victory gave the Eagles their sixth title in seven years of GHSA-sanctioned lacrosse.

At Westminster, coach Jay Watts had watched his team build an 8-1 lead in the first half three days earlier against McIntosh, only to see it dissolve completely by the 20:42 mark of the second half.

The Wildcats (21-1) eventually won that game by three, but Watts wanted to make sure his players took a lesson away from the victory.

“We told them that at halftime, that it’s 0-0,” Watts said. “We just wanted to remind them that they needed to play 50 minutes, and this is probably the first time all year we’ve played a full 50-minute game. That’s what we’ve been talking about all year.”

It was a message his players may have needed, and the memory of what happens when they don’t maintain focus for 50 minutes against a good team was fresh in their minds.

“Coach Watts, in one of our timeouts, told us to keep coming out there, coming out full force,” said Taylor Kaplan, who finished with three goals and five assists. “He reminded us how we got the lead, and [McIntosh] came back to tie it in the last game.

“And that really pushed us toward coming back out after the halftime [to] go out, show them what we’re made of and show them that we’re here to play.”

They did just that, scoring four of the first five goals of the second half to earn a mercy-rule running clock. Holy Innocents’ (18-4) never cut the gap to fewer than nine after halftime.

Kaplan was one of the big reasons for that, running the offense much of the time from behind the net, continuing to add to her school career and season records for assists.

As one of 10 seniors who helped her school win its first two girls lacrosse state championships, Kaplan wanted to close her time as a Wildcat by contributing to a victory.

“This is my last game ever to play on this field,” Kaplan said. “I’ve been going here for 13 years. This is my fourth year on lacrosse. I just wanted to come out and not only score but to help assist, to help my other teammates score. I believe that I’m a team player. I really want my other teammates to succeed.”