A late Blue Devils’ rally comes up short.

LEWISTON – The rain was supposed to let up early on Monday, but it never did.

Likewise, the Lewiston girls’ lacrosse team could have let up after the first half, but they, like the rain, continued to pelt Brunswick with all they had.

Brunswick bolted out to an 8-3 lead in the first half and survived a feverish comeback in the second to edge Lewiston 11-9 in downpour conditions at Don Roux Field.

“The dampness was really the equalizer today,” Brunswick coach Beth Caputi said. “They just kept coming at the end.”

With 22 seconds left on the clock, and just seven seconds after Lewiston scored to pull within two, Gen Lysen, who had four goals on Monday, just missed tucking the ball in the top left corner from within ten feet of the cage on the left side. That goal would have pulled Lewiston within one with plenty of time, but instead it sailed just high.

“The game would have been very different,” Caputi said. “They really would have had a chance to tie it there, and send this to overtime.”

For the Blue Devils, the second half was a chance to make up for a slippery, sloppy first half that at one point had the team behind 7-1.

“I think we probably gave them more to handle than they expected,” Lewiston coach Don Jalbert said. “They are one of the better teams in the league, and we came back on them pretty well.”

Things looked almost as bleak as the weather forecast for Lewiston from the beginning of the game. Lysen scored the team’s first goal, and first of the game, less than two minutes into the game, but for the next 20 minutes, the Dragons dominated.

Jessie Hyde scored three consecutive goals in less than 10 minutes and teammates Mary Vaughan, Katie Hartzell and Heidi Mills added four more to put the Dragons ahead 7-1.

Lewiston regained some momentum as the half drew to a close when Marina McDonald intercepted two identical clearing attempts by the Brunswick netminder directly in front of the cage and fired them into the net.

“Those were big goals,” Jalbert said. “At that point, we knew we could come out in the second half and give them a run.”

Kelsey Varney and Lysen scored two quick goals to open the second half, continuing the Lewiston rally. The teams traded goals over the next 15 minutes before Varney and Lysen again scored back-to-back late in the half to finish the scoring.

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