Fairmont Senior girls lacrosse clinch first round bye crushing Morgantown 15-9

May 1—FAIRMONT — Finishing the regular lacrosse season with senior night, No. 1 Fairmont Senior girls hosted No. 3 Morgantown at East-West Stadium Tuesday night.

After some back-and-forth scoring to start the game, Fairmont Senior rattled off six straight to take the lead and never looked back. The Polar Bears defeated the Mohigans 15-9 and clinched the first round bye in the playoffs.

"Every time we play on senior night, the kids are just so emotional at first," Fairmont Senior Head Coach Jon Cain said. "Sometimes that emotion doesn't make you play as well because you got too much on your mind. But after they settled down, they were fine."

The team honored the 10 seniors between the junior varsity and the varsity games. Getting the win on senior night meant a lot to the team as some of its members were fans before they became players.

"I have loved this team since I was in seventh grade whenever I first started to fall in love with the sport," senior goaltender Liz Amos said. "It was a lot of emotions tonight because I love all these girls. They're like my family, especially Jon [Cain] and [assistant coach] Jerry [Gardner], but it's super important for us to get any win on a home field."

Senior Emily Decker led Fairmont Senior with five goals. She scored a hat trick in the second quarter alone. According to Cain, she's also leading the state in scoring by "about 30-some points." Decker took the accomplishment with humbleness and credited her team.

"It's not just like one person can carry the team or one person with goals," Decker said. "If people didn't give me assists, I wouldn't have been able to get all those five goals. It was really important that we won it on the draw, and then we defend, and when we cleared that we marked up on everyone."

Fellow senior Ainsley Lilly scored four, and her freshman sister Ayla Lilly scored three. Senior Mackenzie Balzer had two, and junior Giana Gerrard had one to round out the scoring for the Polar Bears.

Standing firm in front of the goal, Amos made 10 saves on 19 shots on goal. Cain credited Amos for keeping the team in games all season and called her one of the best goalies at clearing.

"I don't think you're gonna see a better clearing goalie around," Cain said. "She can throw the ball on a dime, and she's exciting to watch."

For the first quarter, Morgantown answered every Fairmont Senior goal with one of its own. Issy Gruschecky answered Mackenzie Balzer's goal, and Bailey Howell answered Ayla Lilly's to tie the game 2-2.

The back and forth continued at the start of the second quarter. Decker's goal with 10:40 remaining in the quarter was answered by Qwinn Spong 24 seconds later to evened the game at 3-3.

Fairmont Senior got on a roll after the last tie, however. Decker got the first and last of four goals the rest of the second quarter for the Polar Bears, and Ainsley Lilly and Balzer scored the two goals in between. With the 4-0 run, Fairmont Senior entered halftime up 7-3.

Keeping up the scoring run into the second half, Ayla Lilly scored with 8:21 to go in the third quarter. Decker scored her fourth goal soon after to cap off the 6-0 run and make it 9-3 for Fairmont Senior.

The two teams began scoring back-and-forth again after Fairmont Senior's run, this time in reverse. Giana Gerrard answered Morgantown's goal to make it 10-4, and Ainsley Lilly answered Grushecky's to give Fairmont Senior an 11-5 lead entering the fourth quarter.

Decker scored the first goal of the fourth quarter 1:21 into it, but Morgantown scored the next three with two from Grushecky to get within four. Ayla Lilly and Ainsley Lilly scored back-to-back goals within 30 seconds of each other for Fairmont Senior to make it 14-8 in the last three minutes of the game.

Grushecky scored Morgantown's last goal with 57.3 seconds left, and Ainsley Lilly answered back with the final goal of the game at 20 seconds remaining. Lilly's goal gave Fairmont Senior the 15-9 final score victory over Morgantown.

"I feel like we were very emotional in the first quarter," Amos said. "I think we just need to mellow out and play our game. I think that we were just trying to play their game too much and not Fairmont Senior lacrosse."

With the postseason now about to start, Fairmont Senior has the first round bye. Decker said the team will practice hard and maybe learn a new play before the second-round game against a to be determined opponent.

Cain believes that opponent will be Buckhannon-Upshur, a team he said "makes you play ugly."

"They're just very physical," Cain said. "They're very strong, and we just have to play our game. It'll definitely be a battle, there's no doubt about it. We just got to wait and see what happens there."

Fairmont Senior has won the state championship three years in a row now and four in the last five. Technically it's four in a row because COVID canceled the 2020 championship.

For the senior class that has known nothing but winning championships, anything less than winning it all again will be as bad as not making the playoffs.

"I feel like for these four-year seniors, if we don't win a fourth we'll feel like not only have we failed our team, but we failed ourselves," Amos said. "We know that we can win that fourth. We just need to put our mind to it and actually do it."

Reach Colin C. Rhodes at 304-367-2548