Fegeley has building assignment at Leesville Road girls lacrosse

Leesville Road girls lacrosse coach Karah Fegeley was in goal for four seasons when Panther Creek first started its girls soccer team, so she’s definitely familiar with program-building.

That has been the assignment at Leesville, where the Pride looks to challenge the powers in the Cap-8 Conference.

Fegeley led the Pride to a 7-6 record last season, but the team won just one of its first six this year. Often times her team’s play has been better than the final result, and a case in point was the 16-4 loss at Millbrook after the score was tied 3-3 at one point.

“Our first half in that game may have been the best we had played all season,” said Fegeley, who is in her fifth season. “I just think our defense got frustrated in the second half and had some trouble communicating. And playing three games that week may have had them exhausted. We had some weaknesses with our transition in the midfield. We graduated 10 seniors last season and we’re rebuilding a little bit. But once we get these girls working together we’ll be able to keep up the progress. Lacrosse is a different game. It’s fun to play and it’s fun to talk about, but a lot of people still don’t know much about it.”

Attacker/midfielder Tori Ellsworth made all-conference last season as a freshman.

“Sometimes we’ve had trouble getting the ball from the midfield to attack,” said Ellsworth, who had youth experience in tennis and swimming. “As or me, I need to fight better for ground balls. Coach is doing a great job bringing us together as a team. But we need to do a better job of communicating. We have the running abilities and stick skills. We just have to do a better job of putting it all together.”

Sophomore goalie Maria Schelfe is developing into a solid backstop with plenty of save opportunities.

“I’d like to get over 50 percent,” said Schelfe, who has been playing goalie for three years and grew up playing soccer and some basketball. “It’s really helped me that Coach has played so much goalie. It’s really valuable for her to warm me up, because she knows where the ball is going to go. And she teaches us a lot about communicating and working together.”

This story was originally published April 20, 2017 at 9:51 PM with the headline "Fegeley has building assignment at Leesville Road girls lacrosse."