SOUTH PARIS – Oxford Hills lacrosse attack Aimee McKeen was feeling it.
“You just get into kind of a zone out there,” McKeen admitted. “I don’t think much. I just do it. I react to everything around me.”
If McKeen doesn’t remember Tuesday’s game, it’s likely that the Mountain Valley defenders that tried to guard her all afternoon will be able to tell her all about it.
McKeen finished with six goals and three assists, Brianna Thompson added five goals and three helpers and Felicia Starbird had three goals and three assists as Oxford Hills overcame a slow start and breezed past Mountain Valley 19-7.
“We have a lot of good players that can use the open space pretty well,” said Oxford Hills coach Ann Bell. “It’s also nice that these girls are very coachable.”
Whether or not it was coachability that led McKeen to score six goal is anyone’s guess. How she did it on the field, though, was apparent.
“She can catch pretty much anything that’s coming at her,” said Bell. “It’s a pretty good feeling when she’s open in the middle like that.”
The Mountain Valley defense, meanwhile, didn’t leave her open on purpose. In fact, they tried to double team her most of the afternoon.
“We did the same thing in the last game,” said Mountain Valley coach Rick White. “We have one defender that’s supposed to be help-side defense and she’s running around doing that, and the other girls kind of forget to help her out. The enthusiasm out there is good, but they are a little disappointed. Hey, it’s sports.”
For the first 12 minutes of the game, you couldn’t calibrate a see-saw to be better balanced than the play on the field. the teams alternated goals, scoring 11 times as the Vikings (1-1) took a 6-5 lead.
“Once we started playing our breaks right, it looked like they started to get tired,” said McKeen.
For the Falcons (0-2), a short staff was apparent as the first half wore on. Their regular starting netminder had an appendectomy and will miss considerable time. Rachel Caldon, who played in goal Tuesday, had never played there before. She finished with 11 saves.
A wisdom tooth removal-gone-bad resulted in another player out, and the team’s leader, Jessica Allen, left in the second half after playing with a limp for most of the game. According to White, she injured a quadriceps muscle in the teams’ first game against Camden Hills, and now both legs are injured after she tried to play through the pain.
The Vikings exploded for six more goals in the latter part of the first half, and outscored the Falcons 7-1 in the second half to clinch their first win of the young season.
Allen and Angie Child combined to score all seven Mountain Valley goals. Child finished with four and Allen with three.
Oxford Hills netminder Abby Pike made three saves in the win.
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