YARMOUTH — Tilsley Kelly scores a lot of goals for the Waynflete’s girls’ lacrosse team.
What she really loves, though, is setting up her teammates, like she did frequently Thursday afternoon at North Yarmouth Academy’s Lewis Field. Kelly assisted on eight goals and scored twice as the Flyers rolled to a 14-5 victory.
Waynflete avenged last year’s painful double-overtime loss in the Class C quarterfinals and improved to 6-1 at the midway point of the season.
“My teammates have such good cuts, so it’s easy to assist them, and a lot of the time (assists) feel even better than scoring a goal,” said Kelly. “We came into this knowing it was a big game and that we could redeem ourselves from last year.”
Just over a minute into the contest, Kelly set up Sasha Melnick to put the Flyers in front to stay. Later in the first quarter, she fed Lydia Birknes and Chloe Marblestone to help Waynflete build a 5-1 lead.
Kelly began the second quarter by finding Birknes and Marblestone for goals before scoring two of her own. Kelly then fed Birknes once more for a commanding 10-2 lead at the halftime break.
“(Tilsley and I) have played together for a few years and we’ve played together outside of school, too, so we work really well together,” said Birknes, who finished with six goals. “We have so many options this year and that makes us so much tougher.”
“Every player on our offense can shoot, which is really nice,” added said longtime Waynflete Coach Cathie Connors. “Tilsley is so unselfish and she’s so humble. She’s thrilled to feed her teammates even if she never scores.”
Kelly twice assisted Birknes in the third quarter as Waynflete induced a mercy-rule running clock by taking a 10-goal lead. While the Panthers (3-4) fought hard to the end, they couldn’t cut significantly into their deficit.
The Flyers also got four goals from Marblestone and one apiece from Melnick and Skylar Harris. Mya Clark stopped six shots.
“We talked about last year and we wanted to come out strong, so it feels really good,” Connors said. “NYA is athletic, physical and strong, but we moved well and trusted each other.”
Waynflete’s lone blemish so far is a two-goal loss at reigning Class B champion Greely.
“Greely was a tough loss, but it taught us how to be gritty,” Kelly said. “We learned so much since then. I’d love to win (states) as a senior. We don’t like to talk about playoffs, but we’re definitely thinking about that.”
Lyla Casey had three goals and Ava Wilkinson added a pair for NYA, last year’s Class C runner-up. Salin Bachor made five saves.
“Waynflete came out really strong and they’re a great team,” said Panthers Coach Molly Moss-Stokes. “We overcame the obstacles the best we could. There are some things we need to clean up, but I was proud of our effort.”
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