Decatur moves to 3-0 in area standing with 14-12 win over Riverwood

Decatur's Audrey Mosser #5 takes shot as Riverwood defenders look on

With just about a month to go in the regular season of the Georgia High School Association lacrosse season and teams head into stretches of area matchups, the Riverwood Raiders and Decatur Bulldogs girls lacrosse teams met up on Friday in a Division II, Area 2 showdown as they headed into the game as two of the three remaining unbeaten teams in the Area.

Looking for their third straight win, the Raiders would jump on the scoreboard first to take an early 1-0 first quarter lead, however the Bulldogs would respond outscoring the Raiders 5-2 the rest of the way of the opening period, leading 5-3 by its end, as junior middie, Payton Sobon scored two of the Decatur goals.

In the second quarter, Riverwood would battle back to trail by one goal as they opened the period with a quick 2-1 run to make it a 6-5 lead for Decatur, who would then score three straight goals, taking a 9-5 lead and would go into halftime with a 9-6 lead.

As the third quarter got underway, Riverwood would once again come out strong as they opened up the period on a 3-1 run to once again trail by one goal, but as they had done throughout the day, the Bulldogs charged back outscoring the Raiders 4-0 to close out the quarter with a 14-9 lead and senior middie, attack, Jasmine Peters scoring two of her four team leading goals in the period.

And while the final period of play would be all Raiders as they outscored Decatur 3-0 in the period, they would fall short as Decatur picked up the 14-12 win to improve to 11-2 overall and 3-0 in the area standings. "I noticed that they really just tried to maintain their composure," Decatur head coach, Alex Powers said as she praised her team's efforts in fending off the Riverwood runs.

"It felt like every time Riverwood would come down the field, they would try to at least get the ball back, try to maintain a little bit of possession, use some clock and just be able to try to put the ball in the back of the net," Powers said, crediting her players for fighting hard despite some errors they had throughout the match.

Now with their second straight win after having their recent seven game win streak snapped, the Bulldogs will go for their fourth straight area win on Monday when they face Chamblee, the only other team unbeaten in area play, and keep momentum behind them down the stretch of the regular season. However, Powers said the Bulldogs will have to continue focusing on discipline, among other things to help them along the way.

"The past couple of days, we've been focusing on making sure as a team from top to bottom, we're all communicating, we're all making sure that we're checking in on each other, because that's equally important and just making sure everybody's invested and ready to go every single moment of every day," Powers said.