SACO — A steady offensive attack led the Thornton Academy girls lacrosse team past visiting Biddeford 9-5 Tuesday afternoon.

Jules Grondin had a game-high three goals, and felt that TA’s communication was key in the win.

“Our team works really well together, we have so many scorers in each game. We are always communicating when we are cutting and we are always looking for the pass so I think we work well as a team,” said Grondin.

Biddeford coach Caitlin Albert echoed those thoughts.

“They work well together, you can tell that they have a strong offensive system and a really strong program. When you have seven players doing the same thing it makes it easy so they did a good job with that,” said Albert.

TA jumped to an early 3-0 lead in the opening 11 minutes with scores from Grondin, Paige LeBlanc and Alana Pettaway.

Biddeford got on the board with a strike from Camryn McKeown, but the Trojans would get goals from Faith Sinclair and Megan Russell to gain a 5-1 lead at half.

The second half was much closer with each team scoring four goals.

Although Biddeford played better in the second half, it was not able to get within reach of the win. TA’s scorers in the second were Grondin with two, and Sinclair and Hannah McAlary with one.

Taylor Turgeon, Missy Huot, Grace Boisvert and Peyton McKeown scored Biddeford’s goals in the second.

Grondin was excited to get the win over rival Biddeford.

“It’s awesome, I always love playing Biddeford. It’s even better when you come out with a win … I know a few girls over there so it’s always a good game,” said Grondin.

Grondin is also happy that her team is on the right track after a slow start to the season.

“We started off down low losing twice, but we pulled it together and last week was big for us wining three games in a row. I think our team has the drive now to play hard for the rest of the season,” said Grondin.

Despite the loss, Biddeford had a handful of impressive performances, including Rebekah Guay, who played her first complete game in the cage.

“She definitely stepped up, she’s a great hockey goalie so we decided to throw her in there and see how it would work and her performance was amazing … it doesn’t look like she’s only been doing it for a week,” said Albert.

Albert hopes her team will avoid slow starts like Tuesday moving forward.

“We need to make the adjustments early in the game and see what a team’s weakness is and not let our heads down because we are a young team, we will need to do that to compete with teams like TA and Marshwood,” said Albert.

TA coach Craig Agreste was happy to get the win, but was disappointed in his team’s finish.

“I think for the first 35 minutes of the game we played lacrosse and the last 15 minutes we stopped. I think we got caught up and started playing the way they were playing … we got caught up in the emotions of the game, got caught up on a few cards and lost ourselves a bit,” said Agreste.

Agreste felt that part of his team’s slow finish was due to emotions.

“We were just caught up in the noise, when we were focused we were fine. We were scoring goals and we were playing well together. When the noise sets in we need to block it out and do a better job of that,” said Agreste.

Looking ahead, Agreste hopes his team will extend its four-game winning streak while improving at the same time.

“We have won four in a row now so we have been playing consistently which you need going into the playoffs,” said Agreste.” “But I think when we go through the hard times we need to plow through it because we stall a bit.”

— Sports Staff Writer Alex Sponseller can be reached at [email protected] or at 282- 1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.