BRISTOL — Last season, the Bristol Central Rams girls lacrosse team struggled to open up the season. The Rams eventually pulled it together and ripped off seven straight to turn the season around and make the Class M State Tournament.
This season, Bristol Central coach Kyle Phelan is hoping to skip the early season struggles and get into their groove right away. The Rams however start the season off with three consecutive tough opponents in Wethersfield, Bristol Eastern and Avon.
Phelan said hopefully the team can show how strong they are right out the gate despite having graduating ten seniors.
“We have a bunch of girls that graduated last year. So we're filling a lot of spots in a lot of key areas, including our defense and goalie and midfield,” Phelan said. “We got a lot of newcomers stepping into roles that they may not have been playing last year.”
Phelan added it’s exciting and a bit nerve racking to be replacing so much of their team from last year.
“It's a little nerve racking because they're just not used to the speed of varsity yet and they'll get there,” he said. “With the weather we've had a couple of scrimmages canceled, so we're going to be kind of thrown into the fire. Some of these kids haven't played a varsity game yet.”
Despite the significant talent that the Rams graduated, Bristol Central will be relying on four key returners in seniors Kaylynn LaPointe and Brooke Watson as well as juniors Callie Lodovico and Emma Burciaga.
Phelan said those core players are good athletes, competitive and will be the team leaders this season.
With the season beginning with such a tough three game stretch, the Rams will get a chance to see where they are and how far they need to improve right away.
Phelan said the first three opponents have proven players that are going to take it to Bristol Central early.
“It's going to be a measuring stick to see where we are and we know Wethersfield and Bristol Eastern both return some key pieces that are going to make them really difficult to deal with,” Phelan said. “So we're going to see what we got against some returning proven players.”
The expectations for the Rams this season will be to continue to make it to the state tournament as they have made it every year over the last handful of seasons. Phelan said with the schedule being a bit harder this season, the standard is still the standard.
“We've got four or five girls coming back that have been a part of that run and they want to keep doing that,” Phelan said. “The schedule is a little bit harder. We gained some teams like Farmington, Conard and Avon that are much more experienced, but we're going to prepare like we normally do and go out and give it everything we got.”
