Darien Girls Lacrosse Edges Greenwich, 15-13

If not for the chill in the air, one would have thought they were watching an FCIAC playoff matchup on Tuesday night.

The Darien and Greenwich girls'  lacrosse teams battled in a back-and-forth contest worthy of a title fight, with the Blue Wave coming out on top, 15-13,  to keep their record spotless at 5-0.

The Cardinals were handed their first loss of the season and fell to 3-1.

"It was really good for the fans," Darien head coach Lisa Lindley said, adding that the nail-biter was a little more stressful on her end. "Coming out of this game, I feel like my offense did well; definitely buried some shots. My defense seemed to be an open grill, so we need to work on that."

The Blue Wave's defense gave up its first goal barely 90 seconds into the contest on a runner by Greenwich attacker Claire Feeney. She came right back at goalie Caylee Waters a minute later for her second goal, and wasn't done there. This gave the Cardinals a quick 2-0 lead, and left the Blue Wave looking for answers.

They found the answer with two quick goals from Cali Ceglarski, who brought Darien back even at 2-2.

 It didn't take long before Greenwich regained the lead on another goal by Feeney, but the Blue Wave answered once again. After a flurry in which it seemed as though the teams were trading goals, the first half ended with Darien leading, 6-5.

The star of the first half was Feeney,  the Cardinals' stellar sophomore who netted five of her eight goals in the first two periods. If Darien was going to prevail, Lindley knew she was going to have to find a way to stop Feeney.

"She's a very good player and she forced me to have to faceguard her," Lindley said. "I didn't want to do that,  but I had to. No one could stop her."

Greenwich started fast in the second half, scoring a quick goal off the stick of Feeney and knotting the score.

Darien responded with three straight scores and looked set to pull away, but Greenwich fired right back with three of its own to square the game at 9-9.  The teams traded goals until the score was 11-11, which was when Greenwich took its first lead of the game.

Cardinal Shannon Coughlan intercepted a pass in Darien territory, whipped around and fired one past Waters to give Greenwich the lead at 12-11. 

"They had a lot of young, fast kids that we weren't expecting," Ceglarski said. 

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the goal seemed to motivate the Blue Wave, as they quickly fired off three goals from Corinne Sommi, Lanning McDonald and Ann Fucigna. A late goal from Greenwich did little to affect the outcome.

"It puts us in position to be the No. 1 seed going into the FCIAC's," Lindley said. "It was a great win for us; now we're just going to try and cut down turnovers and keep drilling our weak areas."

Lindley's team hits the road on Thursday for a 4 p.m. game against Staples.