Scituate girls’ squad comes of age

For Scituate senior lacrosse players Taryn Sachitella and Kathleen Marshall, freshman year feels like a long, long time ago.

The team went 5-11-1 that year, falling far short of a conference tournament berth in coach Jennifer Last’s first season at the helm. The next season, the Sailors showed signs of improvement, but still crawled to a 6-10-2 finish.

Last year, when Sachitella and Marshall moved up to the attack from their previous midfield positions, the team went 11-7, including an impressive 7-2 in the Patriot League. The winning season earned Scituate its first-ever tournament bid, though the Sailors promptly dropped a 19-8 contest to Mansfield in Division 2 South first-round action.

This year, the Sailors took another step forward June 2 when they bested Archbishop Williams, 15-10, in a D2 South first-round game. The tournament win, led by Sachitella and Marshall, was the first in program history, and advanced the squad to the quarterfinals, where the team lost an overtime thriller Monday to Martha’s Vineyard, 21-19.

To Last, the loss wasn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things. With a tourney win in their back pockets, the Sailors’ 2010 season was an unquestioned success in her eyes.

“Hands down, an amazing season,’’ said Last. “Even the losses we’ve had have been so tight. Even when we lost, it was frustrating, but I was very proud of them for what they did.’’

The team finished 14-4 in the regular season, with all four losses coming early to top-notch competition at Hingham, Duxbury, Notre Dame-Hingham, and Norwell.

Leading that charge, as they have for four years now, were Sachitella and Marshall. As the team’s go-to goal-scoring threat, Sachitella was a force with the ball in her stick, registering 84 goals while handing out 20 assists in her senior year, bringing her career point total to 261.

Marshall was the offensive quarterback, and her 61 goals and 50 assists reflect how flexible the 262-career-point scorer is.

“Kathleen is definitely a versatile player,’’ Last said. “She’s played midfield. She can be a center if I need her to be. She can be a defender if I ask her to be. She can be anywhere in the field, but I love her as the center of the attack. She’s my go-to girl, and I ask her to direct what happens on the field.

“Taryn has always been really quick, and can slide right by people on the field. She’s great at rolling the crease, and they’re both just very savvy. They have street smarts on the field — great instincts.’’

Despite the gaudy point totals, neither player plans to continue their lacrosse careers at the varsity collegiate level. Marshall got looks at a few Division 3 schools, but in the end, her desire to attend a bigger campus led her to Clemson University, where she’ll play on the club team.

Sachitella, meanwhile, plans on moving to Boulder, Colo., where she’ll spend a year working full time and earning residency so she can attend the University of Colorado at Boulder with an in-state discount.

Last is irked her senior twosome, particularly Sachitella, didn’t get more looks from the Division 1 level, where she thinks both players could have played.

“I wish this program was more advanced before, because then these girls would have had a chance to be seen to play, because they’re definitely Division 1 athletes,’’ Last said. “But due to lack of press for Scituate, and the program being fairly young, they’ve been at a disadvantage.’’

The girls may not have attracted Division 1 offers, but they’ve opened up opportunities for younger players coming through the Scituate program.

When Marshall was a freshman, she worked as a coach for the seventh- and eighth-grade teams, and it’s at least partially a credit to her that Last now views juniors Alanna Woodford, Sarah Ciolfi, Kacie Kasionowicz, Megan Finneran, sophomore Kate Lemire, and freshman Kelly Martin as legitimate Division 1 prospects.

The team is at the forefront of a larger movement that has girls in Scituate, and across the South Shore, picking up lacrosse sticks at younger ages. It isn’t much of a surprise, then, that Marshall, who started playing in fifth grade and now helps coach a U-9 team, credits the youth program with improving the varsity team’s performance.

“I think everyone has started to take it a lot more seriously,’’ Marshall said. “The youth program’s been growing a lot, and has been starting a lot younger, and so by the time they get to high school they have a lot more experience.

“I think some of that does come from high school teams doing good. When kids see, you know, pictures in the paper, and they’re playing in the tournament and the kids go to games, it definitely sparks interest.’’

After opening up a 4-0 first-quarter lead, the Bishops took three consecutive penalties in the second frame, and were forced to play more than two minutes at a three-man disadvantage. Still, they managed to keep North Reading off the scoreboard during the span, and overcame a 9-2 penalty deficit to earn the two-goal win.

“It wasn’t pretty, but we held them off,’’ coach Bob Joyce said. “In that situation, you just triangle up and hope for the best. It was a good game. We let them back in at that point, and for the first time all year we didn’t score in the third, but we woke up in the fourth and held one.’’

Bob’s son, sophomore Cam Joyce, led the way for the Bishops with three goals and an assist in the win.

Jake Seiner can be reached at jseiner@globe.com.