The Year 2000 PAL girls lacrosse season opened this past weekend with both 7th and 8th grade girls teams playing in the new and exciting Long Island Senior Girls Youth Lacrosse League (LISGYLL). The league is composed of 18 teams playing from 13 communities on Long Island playing in two divisions. Teams from Garden City, Manhasset, Long Beach, Rockville Centre, Huntington, Northport, Kings Park, North Shore, Carle Place, and Wantagh Seaford are just a number of the teams that play in the league along with two teams from Farmingdale.

The 7th and 8th grade Farmingdale Division A team played at Long Beach last Sunday and came away with their first win, 10 to 3. The Farmingdale girls opened the games scoring when Kathleen O'Malley scored the first goal of the season assisted by Bridget Kenna. Then inexplicably the girls from Farmingdale went into an immediate scoring slump for over 12 minutes either missing countless scoring shots or hitting the Long Beach goalie with shots. During this time frame, Long Beach took a 2-1 lead before the Farmingdale girls got back on track scoring the last three goals of the first half in the final nine minutes. Vicki Fanslow had two of her three goals in this half and Tricia Santorelli added the other goal on an assist by Krista Daniello to allow Farmingdale to take a 4-2 half-time lead.

There were no more slumps for the Farmingdale team in the second half as they showed their dominance. Tri-captain Meghan Fanning scored three times in this half and also had an assist. She also won a vast majority of the center draws keeping the ball in Farmingdale possession. Fanning's goals were superbly assisted by Jess Cohen and two by Tricia Santorelli. O'Malley, Fanslow, and Kenna also scored one goal each to round out the second half score. Meg White found an open Fanslow in front of the goal out on the eight-meter arc ten minutes into the second half earning her an excellent assist.

The Farmingdale defense was fabulous throughout the game with superb double teams that either turned Long Beach attackers totally away form the net, gave them poor angles for their slots, weak shots, or where blocked by the defensive sticks. Sookie Wientzen, Jess Cohen, Jess Fitzpatrick, Heather Hoglund, Caitlin Magri, and Krista Daniello put in extremely fine defensive efforts among others. Jess Carvo, Stacey McPartland, Alicia Psillos, Jess Miller, Jenna Celano, and Colleen Magri also had very good games that strongly contributed to the win.

Goaltender Diana Beltrani showed why she is a strong candidate to make the U-15 Long Island girls lacrosse team that will travel to Albany late in June for a national tournament. She was absolutely remarkable making over 16 saves with most of them being point blank. Even though many of them were difficult shots to handle, her athletic ability and well tuned techniques made many of her saves look almost routine. Without her the game not only would have been much closer, but also could have been lost.

Overall it was a very good opening day for an extremely successful program and team. "We got off to a tough start with a lot of scoring opportunities that just couldn't find the inside of the net," said Coach Joe Fanning, "but the team's superiority became evident as the game progressed and the outcome was just about guaranteed. Coach Santorelli was very impressed with the team's hustle and passing game.