By Phil Murphy
Senior Multimedia/Content Editor
Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area
Click the listed links for all photos and videos from the Virginia AAA state championship!
In both the Concorde District and Northern Region championship games, Chantilly watched multiple-goal, late-game leads slip away to Robinson — its only two losses of the year.
In the state final, the Chargers left no doubt.
“Ten seemed to work for us,” Chantilly coach Melissa Gates said. “Maybe, against Robinson, you need to have a lead of 10 goals to beat them.”
The Chargers actually led by as many as 11 goals as they commanded wire-to-wire, beating the Rams, 13-4, to capture the Virginia AAA state championship at Westfield on Sunday.
The win snapped a five-game losing streak for Chantilly in tournament championship games.
“We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” said senior Erin Robertson, who scored twice in the opening 2 minutes, 5 seconds. “We came out so fired up. For a lot of us, this was our last chance to do it.
“We’ve been here five times before. We know what it feels like to lose it. We just wanted to give it our all and leave it all on the field.”
Added Gates: “We always joke about having the silver one. We always get the silver trophy, this time we have the gold one.”
The Chargers peppered the Ram cage and led 9-1 at halftime. And it far from helped the comeback cause when Robinson junior captain Rachel Moody went down with a knee injury less than four minutes into the game. She did not return.
But there still was no answer for the Chantilly offense, which saw the nine first-half goals split among five different players.
And with 13:20 left in the game, Charger junior Liz Dunwoody scored to move the lead to 10 goals, which started a running clock.
“That was our best game I’ve ever seen us play in the last two years,” said Chantilly senior Brittany Griel, who scored a game-high five goals. “That game right there showed how we are as a team. We put it all together.
“Every single one our starters, that put us in a light that we wanted to be remembered by.”
The explosive performance in the championship gave Griel, who will play for Delaware, 73 goals for the season.
With the win, Chantilly became the first team other than Oakton to win a girls’ lacrosse state title in the three years that the sport has been sanctioned by the VHSL. The Cougars beat the Chargers in both the Northern Region and AA/AAA State final last year.
Those losses came just weeks after previously-unbeaten Chantilly lost to Robinson in the final second of the Concorde District championship.
But two hours of perfectly-executed lacrosse earned the Chargers a piece of hardware that made their string of defeats pale in comparison.
And about those bitter feelings from the championship-game losing streak?
“It’s as intense as everybody says it is,” Gates said. “They’re all gone now.”
Email: pmurphy@digitalsports.com
Chantilly (21-2) 9 4 — 13
Robinson (18-4) 1 3 — 4
Goals:
CH – Brittany Griel (5), Kylie Chaplin (2), Erin Robertson (2), Lisa Comerford, Jessica Dennis, Liz Dunwoody, Katie Stillwell.
RB – Courtney Coleman (2), Tory Barron, Katie McHugh.
Assists:
CH – Jessica Dennis, Liz Dunwoody, Brittany Griel.
RB – none.
Goals (Time Left in Half) — Score
1st Half
CH – Erin Robertson (24:15) — 0-1
CH – Erin Robertson (22:55) — 0-2
CH – Brittany Griel (21:23) — 0-3
CH – Brittany Griel (20:19) — 0-4
CH – Katie Stillwell (19:33) — 0-5
CH – Jessica Dennis (16:15) — 0-6
CH – Brittany Griel (14:26) — 0-7
RB – Courtney Coleman (12:27) — 1-7
CH – Kylie Chaplin (8:24) — 1-8
CH – Lisa Comerford (2:13) — 1-9
2nd Half
CH – Brittany Griel (24:22) — 1-10
CH – Liz Dunwoody (13:20) — 1-11
CH – Brittany Griel (9:03) — 1-12
RB – Tory Barron (7:38) — 2-12
CH – Kylie Chaplin (6:22) — 2-13
RB – Courtney Coleman (3:13) — 3-13
RB – Katie McHugh (:29.7) — 4-13
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