Late in the first quarter, it looked like the game was headed to blowout city.
Santa Fe Prep’s girls lacrosse team looked unstoppable as it had a 7-1 lead over Durango with a minute to go in the first quarter on Friday night. The Blue Griffins looked too quick for the Demons and the Durango defense and junior goalie Fiona Chandler had no answers.
But Durango fought back and made it a two-goal game in the fourth quarter. However, the comeback fell short as the Demons couldn’t score late and Santa Fe left Durango High School with a 13-9 win.
Santa Fe improved to 5-0 overall with the win. Durango fell to 5-6 overall with the loss.
“They did really good,” Durango head coach Eric Elliot said about his team’s performance. “We came out and we got punched in the mouth pretty good in the first quarter. We calmed them down pretty good in the second and third quarter and we started coming back a little bit. We got in trouble with the cards and that’s hard to deal with.”
Senior Annabel Carithers scored three goals to lead the Demons. Junior Sofia Naffziger also had two goals for Durango.
Carithers opened things up quickly off the draw and scored down the right alley 23 seconds into the game to give the Demons a lead.
Almost a minute later, Durango had a terrible turnover right in front of its own goal. A Demon defender lobbed a pass which was picked off and Santa Fe quickly scored. Then a Santa Fe attacker scored with a nice spin move to put the Blue Griffiths up 2-1 with less than 10 minutes left.
Sophia Van Luchene breezed past the Durango midfield and defense and scored to put Santa Fe up 3-1 with 9:03 left in the first. This prompted Elliot to call a timeout.
“I just wanted them to take a deep breath, calm down and refocus,” Elliot said about his message to his team in that timeout.
Things didn’t get much better after the timeout. Santa Fe used its speed advantage to blow past the Durango midfield and defense in transition. When Durango did have the ball, it didn’t place its shots well and the Santa Fe goalie made numerous saves on low-powered shots.
Durango scored its second goal with junior Dylan Aspen catching and finishing in traffic for a nice goal to cut the Santa Fe lead to 7-2 with 28 seconds left in the first quarter. Carithers looked like she had another one but the whistle blew for shooting space before she shot it. The Demons trailed 7-2 after the first quarter.
Senior Emmylou Willis opened up the scoring with a free shot score for Durango with 10:48 left in the second. Santa Fe responded a minute later and Carithers ripped one from distance to cut the Santa Fe lead to 8-4 with 6:48 left in the second quarter.
The Demons were able to get some possessions toward the end of the second quarter but poor shots by Durango or checks from Santa Fe kept the score 8-4 at halftime.
Elliot said the Demons started dropping a fifth defender after draws Santa Fe won to slow down the Santa Fe fast break which killed Durango early.
Durango had a good chance to start the third quarter but couldn’t convert on the crease. Santa Fe responded on the other end to put the Blue Griffins up 9-4 with 10:22. Durango won the draw and sophomore Taylor Babcock scored 30 seconds later to cut the Santa Fe lead to 9-5.
Carithers had a nice ground ball off the draw and drove down the right alley and scored to cut the deficit to 10-6 with 7:34 left in the third.
Durango got a good amount of ground balls in the third quarter. Freshman Indie Eaton scored from close range with a shot that found the top of the net to cut the Santa Fe lead to 11-7 with a few minutes left in the third quarter. Santa Fe almost scored at the buzzer but it was ruled after time had expired and the Demons trailed 11-7 entering the fourth.
Carithers had a free shot that could’ve made it a three-goal game but she missed. Luckily, the Demons maintained possession. Durango had multiple shot attempts which led to multiple free shots that were missed. Finally, Naffziger dodged from X and spun and scored low to make it 11-8 with 8:25 left.
After a timeout, Naffziger scored again and cut it to 11-9 with less than eight minutes to go. Durango junior goalie Fiona Chandler then made a great save to keep it a two-goal game. Carithers raced down the field, drew a shooting space call but missed the free shot from a tough angle.
“They were leaving that inside roll open for Sofia (Naffziger) and she finally started taking it so that was pretty good,” Elliot said.
On the other end, Santa Fe got a free shot after a Durango yellow card and finished to put the Blue Griffins up 12-9 with 5:30 to go to seal the victory.
“This is the fastest team we’ve played,” Elliot said. “Most of the teams we play don’t run like that. We’re usually the team that runs like that. It’s nice to see we can handle that and it showed us some stuff we need to work on in practice this week with some transition defense and other stuff to focus on.”
Durango is back in action on Saturday at home against Montrose at noon.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
