The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School varsity lacrosse team is looking forward to an exciting and successful season. With only seven returning starters from last year’s Maritime League championship team, the team will count on many talented, young players to fill out the roster.
Leading the team this year will be senior, Molly Fischer (65 goals and 28 assists), junior Madison Hughes (52 goals and 24 assists), sophomore Alayna Hutchinson (24 goals and 37 assists) and senior defense players Niki Alexander and Angela DeBettencourt.
Juniors Cat Todd and Alex Mark, along with sophomore Taylor Poggi ,will be called upon to play key low offense. Junior April Hargy will return as the team’s goalie. Sophomore superstar Jennie Lindland, out for the season with a knee injury that occurred in her last basketball game, will be sorely missed on the playing field.
Jessica Morris is the JV coach and Kurstin Meehan will assist this year’s teams. Seniors Molly Fischer, Niki Alexander, and Angela DeBettencourt are this year’s captains. They will provide great leadership to the young squad.
With 40 girls trying out for the team this year, I am extremely excited about the new, young talent, especially the 15 freshmen that just joined the program. We just need to find the right combination for a fast, strong defense that will be just the right combination to get the job done. We have the players and the talent, so we should be golden.
Both the Varsity and JV teams are playing in the Eastern Athletic Conference (EAC) league for the first time this spring. The Vineyard won the Maritime League for the past three years and was undefeated in the league last year.
Unfortunately there are only four teams in the EAC who play lacrosse, including Bishop Stang, Bishop Feehan and Coyle Cassidy, so we had to pick up 12 strong non-league games to round out our schedule. All the non-league games will be competitive and should get the Vineyarders ready for tournament play at the end of the season.
Betsy Dripps is the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School girls lacrosse coach.
