EAST PROVIDENCE — The East Providence High School lacrosse teams, respectively, made their 2021 regular season debuts in recent weeks, returning to the field after a near 24-month absence following the cancellation of the 2020 campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EPHS girls’ club already achieved something it didn’t do two springs ago; earn a victory. The Townies went winless the last time they took the field in 2019, going 0-12 in the Division III ranks. East Providence needed just two chances to triumph in 2021, defeating visiting Mount St. Charles, 13-3, in its second game of the year.

The Townies added their second league win of the spring earlier this week, 21-3 over North Providence, improving to 2-4 just past the midpoint of their D-III slate.

The EPHS boys’ contingent also struggled in 2019, finishing with a 3-11 record in D-III. Like their female counterparts, though, the Townies got into the win column in their second outing of 2021, earning a 7-1 over visiting Classical at Pierce Stadium in their new Division IV grouping.

Both teams are using Pierce as their home since the turf field on the school grounds was removed last year to allow for construction of the new EPHS building there.

The girls’ squad, because of ongoing pandemic related health and safety considerations issued by the Interscholastic League, is playing a slightly reduced league slate of 10 games. The boys play just seven league outings. The reduction in games was due to five schools (Johnston, North Providence and Cranston East; Scituate and Exeter-West Greenwich) needing to combine in two co-ops to have viable rosters.

Girls’ notes
Hired for the job prior to the pandemic, Haley McCusker is now well into her first season on the job as the leader of EPHS girls’ program in the stead of former head coach Stacie Pizzi.

McCusker, a native of and an elementary school teacher in Warwick, played high school lacrosse at Pilgrim where she scored 68 goals as a senior and was named second team All-State in leading the Patriots to the 2014 D-III championship game. She then attended Coker University in South Carolina, wrapping up an outstanding four years for the Cobras by scoring 212 goals in 66 career games.

“I was so excited to finally get to work with them,” McCusker said of the 2021 season. “I was excited last year as well because the number of girls who signed up to play was incredible, then everything happened, unfortunately, and the season was canceled.”

Interest remained significant in the program this spring with 43 girls registering to play at the start of the 2021 season before an admittedly more manageable 20 made the varsity, according to the coach.

Senior Alexis Rosa is the starting goalie with junior Alivia Amaral, usually a member of the forward attack group, serving as backup.

Senior Skyla Godfrey leads the defense, joined as a mainstay there by sophomore Sarah D’Agostino. The back line also includes senior Emily Verdone-Doyle, junior Lily Budnick along with sophomores Kenna Wigginton and Kylee Vieira. Another freshman, Eva Laroche, was seeing minutes before a collar bone injury ended her season.

Senior Ashley Dias along with juniors Haley Massa and Tessa Laroche and sophomore Ryleigh Grant pace the midfielders, whose ranks also include junior Elke Jones and senior Emily Gorski.

The attack group includes senior Amy Tewksbury, junior Olivia Williams, sophomore Emma LeDuc and freshman Rylee Jackson.

“Right now, they’ve progressed tremendously since the first day of tryouts,” McCusker said. “Most of the girls have really developed their stick skills and their overall knowledge of game has improved.”

The Townies entered this week with a 1-4 record in league games, having dropped a couple of winnable outings to close last week against Scituate, in which they led by five goals at half, and Classical.

The victory a couple weeks back over Mount St. Charles ended the lengthy victory drought for the program. Grant scored six goals against the Mounties. Dias, E.P.’s leading scorer to date, had three while Gorski and Wigginton had two apiece.

“One of my main goals was to get the seniors at least one win, which I’m really happy, super excited about,” McCusker added. “And the way they’re playing and the progress they’ve made, I’m hoping to get a couple of more wins before the season’s over.”

While reaching the playoffs appears unlikely with the slow start, though not mathematically out of the question, McCusker said another aim in the second the half of the season is to continue “to break all of their bad habits. I need to keep building their fundamentals so they learn how to properly play women’s lacrosse.”

Boys’ notes
Veteran coach Angelo Pizzi returns for yet another season on the EPHS boys’ sideline, his 10th at the helm. He’d usually be quite excited about having 11 seniors and three juniors on his roster, but the lack of actually having a 2020 season hindered the team’s advancement year-over-year.

“We didn’t know what to expect when we got back together. I think we would have had a pretty good squad last year, but COVID killed the season. And we also graduated all of our defenders last year, so we’re learning as we go,” said Pizzi. “We’re following the ’80-20’ system. We’re spending 80 percent of practice on the 20 percent of the game’s most important skills, of which are passing, catching and ground balls. It’s boring, but it’s something we have to do.”

Senior Sean Baird, who played some in net earlier in his career, is the Townies’ goalie. The defense includes seniors Mattheus Ferreira, Justin Couto, Jamel Lust and John Cox along with freshmen Braedon Conaty, Ryan Travassos and Noah Mensah.

The midfielders are seniors Nathan Almeida, George Benziger and Jovani Lima as well as junior Austin Crevier, sophomores Anthony Mello and Austin Arruda and freshman Lucas Saveory.
The attack includes seniors Erick Bravo and Griffin Poland, juniors Kael Conaty and Alex Crowley and sophomore Riley Feeney.

Crevier scored three goals and Crowley, subbing for injured keeper Baird, made two saves in the Townies’ victory over Classical earlier in the year.

The Townies began play this week with a 1-1 league mark. Of the eight teams in D-IV, six are expected to qualify for the playoffs. Pizzi said he is “hopeful” E.P. could be one of them, but making the postseason isn’t necessarily what this spring is all about.

“We had three goals going into the season,” Pizzi added. “One was to allow the kids to get on the field, especially the seniors. Allow them to get a little bit of enjoyment from playing a game they value. Second was we want to be a competitive team in each game, and we’re doing that so far. And last, we want to put forth all of our efforts in trying to make the playoffs. Again, hopefully we can do that.”