TOPSHAM — With several regulars, including leading scorer Hayley Michaud, out on vacation, the Mt. Ararat High School girls lacrosse team was a bit undermanned Saturday against visiting Cony.

And, after forging out to a 2-0 lead, the Eagles, in their season opener, lost their momentum in a hurry as the Rams picked up five unanswered first-half goals en route to an 11-4 Eastern Maine Class A win.

Chelsea Begin and Mia Diplock each scored three goals for Cony, while Bayleigh Logan and Heather Leet picked up two each.

In the Mt. Ararat effort, Rowley Jones had three goals and Cat Johnson one as the Eagles struggled in their offensive end and were hurt by a whopping 29 turnovers. Cony goaltender Katrina Duncan was also outstanding as she turned aside every free-position shot.

“You have to score goals,” said Mt. Ararat coach Sam Chard. “We had 26 shots and four goals. We were also ohfor seven on the eight-meter arc. She made some good saves and they out-hustled us and played us hard.

“It is the first game and there were some players there who were kind of lost and weren’t used to where they were playing. In the opening minutes we were playing brilliantly and got two quick goal. I was thinking, ‘hey, these girls are looking pretty good.’

“And, when they scored that first goal it was like we just shut down. It was a mental battle.”

In a possession game, Jones got off the first shot of the season two minutes in (wide left) and Johnson put her team up 1-0 at 6:50 when she weaved through three defenders to score from in close.

Mt. Ararat, scheduled to visit Gardiner on Tuesday and host Morse on Thursday, went up 2-0 at 8:42 when Jones received a nice centering pass from Sierra Gilley and onetimed a shot past Duncan.

Roof caves in

Three minutes later, the roof caved in as Diplock scored two goals just 18 seconds apart. From there, Emily Quirion scored with 11:44 left, Logan converted a Hayley Quirion feed with 10:32 remaining and Begin scored with 26.1 seconds left for a 5-2 halftime lead.

During that stretch, Mt. Ararat goaltender Bailey Sullivan kept her team in it with several strong saves.

“We’ve got to play competitively without key players,” added Chard. “Bottom line, we’ve got to be able to play … and we had a lot of turnovers. And, that’s good defense by them because they were doubling and tripling us.”

While Cony defenders like Kevie Rodrigue, Begin, Diplock and Josie Lee were bottling up the Eagles’ offense, Cony added a sixth unanswered goal when Logan scored a free-position goal at 2:47 of the second half.

Mt. Ararat finally answered when Jones scored off a Rebecca Schuman feed at 4:21, and she added another goal 16 seconds later on a semi-breakaway to make it 6-4.

However, Cony held a territorial edge and got two goals each from Begin and Leet down the stretch to pull away.

[email protected]