Girls Lacrosse: Riverhead comes up short against Bay Shore, 10-8

Playing in Division I, wins are hard to come by for an up-and-coming program. There are teams like Ward Melville, Northport and Connetquot that have a much larger student-athlete pool to choose from and find success every season. Riverhead is a middle-of-the-pack team. Taking down any larger school is an accomplishment on its own.

Thursday morning against Bay Shore, Riverhead almost pulled off the upset. A game that was tied 4-4 at halftime, came down to the final quarter after the Blue Waves tied it up at 7-7.

“We were in the game the whole time,” Riverhead head coach Ashley King said. “They really fought until the end.”

But Bay Shore (2-2 Division I) walked away 10-8 winners at Riverhead High School.

“We ended up having a couple detrimental turnovers that really cost us the game,” King said. “But I’ve never seen our team come out to play this season like they did today. We played together.”

Though Riverhead (1-4 Division I) has lost four consecutive games after starting the season on a 14-4 victory over Copaigue, the teams they’ve played since are atop the division.

North Babylon is 3-1, Commack is 3-0 and Connetquot is 3-1. The schedule hasn’t exactly been easy but there’s still much of the season left to be played and things are looking up.

“At halftime I told the girls this is the Riverhead I’ve been waiting for,” King said. “From our games last week to our game today we are completely different. We’re listening to the calls from the sideline, we’re running the same sets, we’re flexible in changing our defense in the blink of an eye.”

The only thing holding the Blue Waves back is themselves, King said.

“We just struggle a bit with ourselves,” she said. “We tend to turn the ball over on our own as opposed to making the opponent work for it.”

Though Riverhead is in its fifth varsity season, King doesn’t want to consider her group in the learning stages.

“I’ve given up describing us as a young team anymore,” King said. “We’re in the mix. I think people used to say ‘we’re playing Riverhead, we can work on things against them’ and that’s just not the case anymore. Any day anyone can beat anybody.”

Kayla Kielbasa led the Blue Waves in scoring with a career-high four goals and Courtney Troyan chipped in two to add to her team-leading 14.

Riverhead returns to action on Tuesday against Walt Whitman.