Fort Mill’s Alexa Strelick looks for shooting space during the Jackets playoff game against JL Mann Thursday.

What was supposed to be a close match-up wasn’t as the Fort Mill girls’ lacrosse team cruised into the 5A Upper State championship with a 17-1 win over JL Mann Thursday at Bob Jones Stadium.

The Jackets will now travel to Riverside Monday to take on the Warriors for the Upper State championship. Fort Mill opened the up the game scoring within the first 21 seconds, and besides letting one JL Mann goal slip by, proceeded to score 15 unanswered goals.

The performance was a lot more of what Jackets’ head coach Kirsten Terry was expecting after not liking how they played in the playoff opener against Nation Ford Tuesday.

“I told them they had to put the work in,” she said. “They have so much potential.”

Fort Mill had just five players amass the 17 points in the game with both Alexa Strelick and Auri French each scoring five goals to lead the Jackets. Strelick struck in the opening seconds of the game and French came back about a minute later to make it 2-0 Fort Mill in the first couple minutes of play.

JL Mann got their lone goal at 19:45 in the first half to make it 2-1, but Strelick scored her second goal of the contest less than a minute later and the Jackets were off to the races. Natalie Michelow scored her first of four goals in the game with about 16:30 left in the first half and then Strelick and French would continue to pace Fort Mill.

Emma Marchan scored for the Jackets about the 11:30 mark in the first half and Lydia Laney would come back two minutes later to get her first of two goals in the game. Michelow and French would add two more goals before the half for the Jackets to allow them to take a comfortable 11-1 lead into the locker room.

In the second half, French would open the scoring up for Fort Mill with her fourth goal. French also had eight assists in the game to go with her four goals. Laney, Michelow, Strelick would all add second half goals as well for the Jackets.

Fort Mill is now 13-4 on the season overall. Riverside is 16-1 and beat Clover 18-4 Thursday in their second-round game. Fort Mill and Riverside have met earlier in the season with Riverside squeezing out an 8-7 win.

Lacrosse

The Fort Mill boys’ lacrosse team lost their second-round match to JL Mann 11-4 on the road. JL Mann jumped out to an 8-2 lead after the first half and despite the Jackets cutting that lead in half at 8-4 after the third quarter, Fort Mill wasn’t able to keep momentum in their corner. The Jackets end the season with a 10-5 record.

Golf

Fort Mill improved to 12-0 on the season with a win over both Northwestern and South Pointe in a three-way match at Waterford Golf Club Thursday. Fort Mill shot a 142 as a team, to South Pointe’s 166 and Northwestern’s 182.  The Jackets were led by a two-under par 34 by Griffin Tarver and a one-under 35 from Cam Baker. Keegan Brown shot an even par 36 and Bryce Wittmer was one over par with a 37.

Softball

Fort Mill beat Lancaster 9-0 in non-region action to improve to 8-3 on the season. Emma Tisdale had three hits for the Jackets and Maddie Drerup had 13 strikeouts in the win. Sydnie Spears hit a three run home run in the game for Fort Mill as well.

Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep

Fort Mill’s Natalie Michelow runs down field during the Jackets game against JL Mann.