Cold Spring Harbor girls lacrosse tops Locust Valley to win seventh straight county championship
Cold Spring Harbor players celebrate after their 18-5 win over Locust Valley in the Nassau Class D girls lacrosse final at Adelphi on Tuesday. Credit: James Escher
The Cold Spring Harbor girls lacrosse team didn’t allow itself to take anything for granted.
The Seahawks have the talent to compete with any school in the nation, so it could have been easy for the players to assume they’d win a county title in the smallest classification, which is strictly based on enrollment. But this team wouldn’t think like that. They prepared all week as if Tuesday might be the final game of their season, although it quickly became apparent it wouldn’t be.
Top-seeded Cold Spring Harbor defeated No. 2 Locust Valley, 18-5, in the Nassau Class D championship game at Adelphi to win their seventh straight county crown.
“It never gets old,” coach Danielle Castellane said. “We spoke about the fact that we’ve been here before and we hoped to be here again, but we were taking it one day at a time. That’s why you play the game.”
Cold Spring Harbor (15-3) advances to play the winner of Mattituck/Babylon in the Long Island Class D championship, a state Class D subregional matchup, 11:30 a.m. on June 3 at Adelphi. Locust Valley finished 12-6.
The Seahawks, the defending state Class D champions, haven’t lost a postseason game on Long Island since 2017. They won their fifth straight Nassau Class D title on Tuesday, but the Seahawks are focused on more. Between Class C and D, they’ve won a title in three of the last five state tournaments, and look to add to that in the coming weeks.
“Everything is a stepping stone,” senior attack Sienna Koke said. “Each practice, we are thinking this could be our last time practicing on our own turf. We know we really just want to get to the next one, with the end goal being states.”
Koke was one of six Seahawks to record at least three points, with five of them being seniors. Maggie Spehr had four goals and one assist, Ruby Spielberger and Kelly Callaghan each had two goals and two assists, Ryan Reynolds had a goal and three assists and Olivia Mulada and Koke each scored three goals.
Cold Spring Harbor scored four goals over the game’s first 5:35 and had the opening six goals of the contest. The Seahawks led 8-2 after the first quarter and 13-2 at halftime.
“We all push each other every single day,” senior defender Zoe Soskin said. “There are so many of us and we all work to be better than each other, and that helps so much. We come out here and play out hardest with no letups. I think the score today shows we do whatever we need to do to get the job done.”
