The Huskies Look to Bounce Back

It was a sunny afternoon in Rockaway Park in the spring of 2023 and the Huskies, Stuyvesant's girls’ lacrosse team, were fighting for a place in the PSAL City Championship final against Beach Channel’s Lady Dolphins. As per the game's high stakes, the match was competitive and ended in a 4-4 tie in the first half. Both teams were even more competitive in the second half, and the Huskies were able to score two more goals. However, to their heartbreak, the Dolphins would pip their impressive feat with three of their own goals to make the final score 7-6 in their favor. While the Huskies’ season was over and they could be proud of their deep run, they knew the next year would come with even more challenges. As a team heavily reliant on seniors who would be graduating, the team had many tough changes in their path, compounded by the fact that they would not receive any extra players from the PSAL All-Access program for the upcoming season. New Head Coach Lance Tomas was called in to guide the team through this transitional year, and he certainly had his work cut out for him. 

The Huskies would face their first defeat almost immediately into the 2024 season, failing to score a single goal in a disappointing 0-15 defeat to Long Island Campus. “It was a bit of a wake-up call for us,” junior co-captain and goalkeeper Mira Nambiar said. “We were still in the mindset of our semifinalist team without adjusting to the fact that our team had changed a lot.” Indeed, due to their many departing upperclassmen and senior co-captain Yashna Patel sidelined with an injury, the Huskies were left with a team devoid of experience and filled with uncertainty early into their season. Additionally, because Coach Tomas was only called in a few days before their first match, the Huskies had barely any time to host all-team preseason practices. “We hadn’t adjusted to how the team played this year,” Nambiar said, and it showed when the team wrapped up the month of March winless and without a goal scored. 

However, things started improving in April when the Huskies were granted two victories from forfeits against Queens High School of Teaching and Frank J. Macchiarola Educational Complex. Then, the Huskies scored their first goals against the Sharks of Christopher Columbus Campus in an 8-2 defeat where they managed to show flashes of brilliance in the first and third quarters. Next, came a loss of 0-8 to A. Philip Randolph Campus, where the Huskies displayed their improvements despite the underwhelming final score. Thanks to some tweaks to their tactics, the Huskies limited their opponents to only a single goal in the second half. “It was the best defensive performance our team, consisting mostly of new and younger players, had all season,” Coach Tomas said. The ability to maintain this defensive structure throughout an entire half also exhibited the team's improved chemistry as the great execution of Tomas’s defensive plan could not be carried out without the proper communication between players. 

The momentum of this second-half display carried over to the next game against Lehman Campus where the Huskies forced their opponents to forfeit and earned an emphatic win. “It was a brilliant highlight of this season,” Nambiar said. “Many players on the team got their first goals of the season, and I was so proud of the team camaraderie.” Overall, the Huskies had come a long way to overcome their initial woes and had deservedly ended April with a great victory. Unfortunately, that was still not enough to qualify the team for the playoffs, meaning the Huskies could not repeat their feats from last season.

Nevertheless, there were still a lot of positives that the team could take away from this PSAL season. Particularly, the players’ determination to improve despite the many challenges they faced right from the start was very admirable. “Our biggest strength this year would be the team’s persistence,” Nambiar said. “The new players put in the time and effort and improved their technical skills so much [and] the team has developed so much from how it was at the start of the season.” 

This was especially impressive given that many players had little experience playing lacrosse before this season. Despite this, the Huskies exhibited incredible tenacity to play every game to their fullest potential, even if they had less experience than their opponents. “The players gelled together as a team, pushing each other during practices, and supporting each other during games no matter what the result was,” Coach Tomas said. 

Given their decent finish to this season, the Huskies have a good opportunity to take advantage of their built-up momentum as they look toward the future. “I do believe we will be able to turn this into a success for next year now that we have a team of people with experience in the game,” Nambiar said. 

The future does look promising, as most of the key players who have made their mark for the Huskies have been underclassmen. Chief among them are sophomore attackers Grace Cho, Isabel Valera, and Alexa Leahy, who have also displayed their leadership skills alongside their talents in the field. “They would help lead small groups as due to unfortunate circumstances, I was the only captain for most of the season and wasn’t able to be everywhere at once,” Nambiar said. “They really stepped up to help teach the new players … and helped to keep morale high.” 

Amongst the new players, freshman midfielder Nina Quane also excelled this season despite her grade, earning herself a place in the starting lineup. “She played incredibly well all season,” Coach Tomas said. Furthermore, the presence of co-captain Nambiar next year will provide the necessary continuity and experience needed to push the team to the next level.

It will now be the objective of next year to once again accomplish a deep run after all the lessons of this transitional season, and potentially go one step further than their 2023 campaign. Though they have faced numerous challenges and ended the year with an underwhelming 3-3-10 record, the Huskies remain highly optimistic. “My hopes for the team for next year are that we utilize what we learned during this rebuild year to improve our game,” Nambiar said. “Now that we have many players who have experience…we can focus on becoming more competitive. I have very high hopes for next season.” With their young and resilient core of players who will be as motivated as ever for the upcoming spring, it seems only a matter of time before the Huskies bounce back.