Park bounced back from its only loss of the season with a convincing 15-5 win at Roseville Friday in Suburban East Conference girls' lacrosse.
Park improved to 4-1 in the SEC and 5-1 on the season. The Wolfpack are tied for second in the conference, one win behind co-leaders Stillwater and Cretin-Derham Hall.
The Wolfpack plays at Irondale (0-6, 1-6) Wednesday, hosts East Ridge (4-1, 4-2) in another big game on Friday, then plays St. Paul/Two Rivers (1-5) at St. Paul Central Monday.
Stillwater 11, Park 5
Both teams came in undefeated in the Suburban East Conference, but only Stillwater escaped unsullied Wednesday evening at Cottage Grove.
Fourth-ranked Stillwater just had too much firepower for the host Park Wolfpack, scoring a 11-5 win in SEC girls lacrosse.
The Ponies came in undefeated in the conference and left the same way, leading 3-1 after the first period, 6-2 at the half and 8-3 after three quarters.
Stillwater were 4-0 in the conference and 4-1 overall, with a season-opening 13-11 loss to Prior Lake and then wins over Roseville (16-5), Irondale (19-0), East Ridge (13-4) and Cretin-Derham Hall (10-7). Park, meanwhile, was 4-0 coming in, beating Mounds View (13-2), White Bear Lake (9-4), Simley (5-2) and Forest Lake (14-1).
“They’re a very good team,” Park head coach Scott Leonard said of the Ponies. “They’ve been the class of the conference for over 12 years now, maybe even longer than that. What they’ve been doing this year is no letdown. Their top players Maycie (Neubauer) and Madi (Richert) are back this year. Both really good players. We had our work cut out. They doubled, they did their scouting report and realized Madi Brinkman is scoring a lot of goals, they doubled her and we just didn’t react the way we needed to. And then we’re still learning with the young defense right now, trying to figure things out.
“Right now, you can’t win this conference with just one girl wanting to score,” Leonard continued. “We’ve got to get a second option that wants to put the ball in the back of the net. For the most part they competed the whole night. We didn’t do the little things as far as ground balls and making the one extra pass, but they competed the whole night.”
Junior midfielder Brinkman led Park with four goals but needed some scoring help which didn’t materialize. Maleah McMorrow had the only other score for the Wolfpack.
Lauryn Ehrenstrom struggled in goal against a high-powered Stillwater attack, giving up 11 scores on 18 attempts.