A young Nation Ford girls lacrosse team fell in a big way to Charlotte Country Day Wednesday evening to even its record on the season.
Nation Ford lost 20-7 to Country Day and are now 2-2 on the season. The Falcons, who have just four seniors on their team, were able to hang with the private Queen City school, but was never able to really make a game of it against them.
Nation Ford is under a new head coach this year in Emily Daly.
“Being a new coach, it is tough and we have a very young team,” Daly said. “It is a little hard. What I expect out of this team is to grow and learn the game. I want the girls to come out with their heart and hustle and learn something new every day.”
Country Day opened the game scoring within the first 23 seconds and then jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first three minutes before Nation Ford could get things heading in their direction.
The Falcons broke through with a goal at 21:30 from Catherine Barhorst, the first of her four in the game. Barhorst would score again two minutes later as Country Day would sandwich goals in between Nation Ford’s goals to make it 5-2.
Country Day then went on a five-goal streak over the next nine minutes to go up 9-2, before Georgia Sharpless would score her first of three goals in the game.
Nation Ford made the game respectable scoring three in a row with two more goals coming from Barhorst to make it 9-5 with 4:45 left in the first half.
However, momentum was short lived for Nation Ford as Country Day as went on another small scoring streaking rattling off four more goals to go up 13-5 at the half.
In the second half, Sharpless opened things up for Nation Ford scoring her second goal about two and a half minutes into play. That goal was as close as the Falcons would get as Country Day scored seven consecutive goals over the next 20:45 seconds to pull away.
Sharpless did add her third goal and the final goal of the game with about 10 seconds left to play for Nation Ford.
“It was a tough game,” Daly said. “Country Day is an established team. They have been together for years. I thought we had them for a little bit. I think in the future we will improve.”
The Falcons play at Blythewood on Thursday, March 2 and will return home Thursday, March 9 against Spring Valley. Nation Ford is 0-1 in Region 3-5A play having lost to Clover 9-4 on Monday, Feb. 27.
Mac Banks: mac@fortmillprepsports.com, @fortprep
