Falcon girls' lacrosse recap

RUMFORD -- There is always questions to ponder following a season of team sports because at certain points things might have turned out differently and those thoughts could be bounced around by Kristen Provencher, who recently completed her initial campaign as coach of the Mountain Valley girls' lacrosse team.

The Falcons had returned an experienced group of senior letter winner and had high expectations. Those plans were derailed by a slow start, however, the team held together and finished their season at 4-9. A major accomplishment was returning to the Class B playoffs, which included earning a home game. But a scheduling conflict (senior banquet) forced the game to be played a day earlier at Kents Hill in Readfield. The venture into the second season ended in a 9-7 loss against Gardiner in a quarterfinal game.

"I would say that the biggest strength of the team was that they always worked together and never turned against each other on the field," said Provencher, in accessing the performances. ''Even if we were down by many goals, the girls never took it out on each other."

MV was led by center Ayla Allen. Other attackers included Ari Glover, Emily Gallant (hardest shot on team, wing) and Whitney Ruff (attack wing/defensive wing) and junior Jessica Theriault, attacks.

Allen had scored 207 goals during the previous three seasons, so a goal that Provencher stressed was to develop a more balanced offense in order to be less predictable to opponents and to foster a healthy environment with open communication.

The effort to distribute the ball resulted in 10 different scorers. Still, the big gun was Allen, who added 69 more goals to end with 276 career goals. Chelsea Bordeau stepped up with 25, Gallant with 15, Kayla Pingree with 6, Zaraya Simard with 3, Ari Glover, 2, Katie Puiia, 5, Theriault, 3, Makayla White, 1, Abby Day, 2.

"We definitely had a strong group of seniors and they will be missed," said Provencher. They will be taking a lot of experience with them and the next couple of years will be challenging."

Lori Brown (attack), Kayla Drapeau (D) and Carita DeTellis (attack) just completed their freshman springs. A strength will be the defense with incoming junior goalie Jordan True, who is fronted by senior Alexa Fryover.

"I think that my first season went pretty well," said Provencher. "We would have liked to win a few more games of course, but we play a very tough schedule, (mostly class A teams) and the girls did their best. I learned that I'm never going to please everyone so I just have to stay true to myself and be confident in my decisions."