Varsity girls lacrosse wins home game against Newark

Freshman+Reina+Joseph+cradles+the+ball+as+she+runs+towards+the+goal%2C+keeping+it+away+from+the+opposing+team.+The+girls+lacrosse+team+is+currently+undefeated+with+an+8-0+record.

Tiffany Wong

Freshman Reina Joseph cradles the ball as she runs towards the goal, keeping it away from the opposing team. The girls lacrosse team is currently undefeated with an 8-0 record.

by Tiffany Wong, Aquila News Editor

Varsity lacrosse won their home game against Newark High School 13-6 today at 5 p.m.

Newark scored the first goal of the game 19 seconds into the first half, with attacker Sara Yen (9) responding with Harker’s first goal around three minutes after. The Eagles followed up with eight more goals scored by midfielder Heidi Zhang (11), defender Grace Hajjar (10) and defender Anna Vazhaeparambil (9) to the Cougars’ one. Harker led 9-2 by the end of the first half.

After the Eagles scored the first goal of the second half, the Cougars picked up the pace with three consecutive goals before Heidi’s seventh goal of the game with seven minutes left to play. Newark scored the last goal of the game near the 23-minute mark. Both teams scored four goals in the second half, bringing the final score to 13-6.

This year’s varsity lacrosse team features seven freshmen, two of whom scored goals during today’s game.

“We lost almost all of our starters from last year, so I would consider us a pretty young team,” head coach Alyssa Dunlap said. “With that, we have a couple of freshmen starting, so the bulk of our starting lineup are freshmen; they’ve done a fantastic job stepping up and filling those roles, especially with a couple of them this being their first season playing lacrosse.”

Today’s victory against Newark brings the team’s overall record to 8-0 and their league record to 3-0. For the future of this year’s season, the Eagles are looking forward to playing challenging teams in both league and non-league games.

“In practice, [our coach] has really been focusing on gameplay situations. On defense, we’ve implemented this technique called ‘The Ride’; when we’re trying to get the ball back, we all assume specific positions to try to clog up the entire field so that we can shut down the ball carrier on the other team,” Heidi said. “That was really successful this game because every single time the other team got the ball, we would go on ‘The Ride’ and get it back.”

The team next plays a home game against Mountain View High School this Friday.