Girls’ Lacrosse victorious over Eastside

Gulf Breeze High School Girls’ Lacrosse varsity team opened up the 2016 season last Friday night with a 9-1 victory over Eastside High School out of Gainesville, Fla. The JV squad played before the varsity and increased its season record to 3-0 after defeating Eastside 13-6.
The Lady Dolphins wasted no time putting points on the board in the season opener. Shelby Dunne flicked a pass to Francis Williams off of the initial draw, who brought it up the field to give K.R. Costello a shot on goal. Williams wound up with the rebound in the 3rd minute and scored the first goal of the season for Gulf Breeze.
Eastside would have a chance to even the score ten minutes later when Kenni Berg found space just in front of the crease and took a shot on goal, but Brianna Sekul came to the rescue of the Gulf Breeze defense and stick checked Berg as she was releasing her shot — throwing the ball off course.
Williams would answer the attempt in the 15th minute when she shuffled around Berg and Kat Bentley defending the Eastside goal, which was heavily guarded, and fired a hard shot past goalie Emily Griffis to put the Dolphins ahead 2-0.
Two minutes later, Williams would send in a feed pass for Costello, who would have an easy finish for her first goal of the season.
Williams would get a hat trick just before halftime when she received a pass from Shelby Dunne in traffic, ducked under a challenge from an Eastside defender and found just enough space to let off her shot – hitting the upper right hand corner at the buzzer to put the team up 4-0.
The second half opened much like the first and was dominated the majority of the time by a tenacious Gulf Breeze offense, which seemed to be comfortable on the attack and executed many well designed plays to create chances on goal.
Eastside would finally break through Gulf Breeze’s defense in the 48th minute after Taylor Bishop was awarded a penalty shot that gave the team possession and set herself for a pass to Berg, who found space in front of the crease and easily put it past Gulf Breeze goalie Alanna Zambetti to make the score 8-1.
Despite the error that led to Eastside’s only goal, the Lady Dolphins did well on defense and held the Lady Rams to just five shots on goal compared to the 17 shots that Gulf Breeze recorded.
Head coach Carlee Costello said that they try and work on keeping the balls in their sticks as long as they can, and was pleased with how the team performed.
“I think the main strengths tonight was the way they handled the ball,” head coach Carlee Costello said about the varsity match. “They took the time we ran every play that we had practiced, and they didn’t rush things. That is the main thing we are trying to do is just not to rush things,” she said.
The team has two other games this week at home, the first against Hillgrove High School on Monday at and the second is tonight against Pensacola High School at 6 p.m.