ARLINGTON — The Wakefield High girls’ lacrosse team started their 2024 season with a 13-8 victory on April 2 in Arlington.
The Warriors found the back of the net early and often, finishing the game with four different goal-scorers.
Leading the way for Wakefield were senior captains Molly Forrest and Juliana Spaulding.
Spaulding had a game-high 6 goals to go along with an assist, 5 groundballs and a game-high 8 draw controls.
Forrest scored 5 goals, had 5 groundballs and 4 draw controls.
JULIANA SPAULDING had 6 goals, an assist, 5 groundballs and 8 draw controls in Wakefield’s season-opening win over Arlington last week. (File Photo)
Two more senior captains also played well for the Warriors as Lea Carangelo had a couple groundballs and played solid defense while Kyleigh Formicola orchestrated the attack with a game-high 5 assists.
The four captains, each Middlesex League All-Stars last year, are the foundation of a team that has high expectations this season and dreams of making the state tournament.
They certainly took a promising first step toward that goal in game one.
More strong games came from Corrine Dunlap, who had a game-high 6 groundballs, Rory McNeill, who had a goal, 2 draw controls and a groundball and Megan Cataldo who had a goal and 3 groundballs.
The Warriors finished strong to pull away from a Spy Ponder team with a dangerous attack of their own. In the end, Wakefield had too much offense for the home team to contend with and the Spy Ponders had no way of slowing down Spaulding, Forrest and Formicola.
The Warriors are looking to improve on last year’s 8-10 record, a season in which they finished just one win away from automatically qualifying for the state tournament. They were power ranked No. 35 in D2, just outside of the top 32 that qualify automatically as well.
Wakefield’s experience and leadership will certainly help with that goal as they return 12 seniors from last year’s squad including the four captains.
The Warriors hosted Woburn last night (results unavailable at press time). It was their first of three games in three days this week as they travel to Belmont (1-2) today and go to Wilmington (1-3) tomorrow. Both games start at 4:15 p.m.
