Amelia Brite, Emma Hendry and Emily Parisi power Commack girls lacrosse past Huntington
Commack midfielder Amelia Brite looks to put the shot on the Huntington net in a Suffolk Division I girls lacrosse game on Monday at Commack. Credit: George A Faella
Just keep playing.
The Commack girls lacrosse team has emphasized having the mentality of a goldfish. The two main characteristics the Cougars want to take from a goldfish are having a short memory to quickly move on from mistakes and sticking together. It’s only silly if it doesn’t work and for Commack, that’s certainly not the case.
Host Commack defeated Huntington, 11-7, in a Suffolk Division I girls lacrosse matchup on Monday in part to its goldfish mindset.
“If you make a mistake, get rid of it,” midfielder Amelia Brite said. “Go onto the next play. And that’s helped us so far because we’re not stuck on the last play and then out for the whole game because you just made one bad play.”
Brite had three goals and two assists to lead a balanced Commack offense. Emma Hendry added three goals and an assist and Emily Parisi added two goals and two assists as the Cougars had six different goal scorers.
“It’s really about trusting each other because if it wasn’t us, it would be someone else (scoring),” Brite said. “It’s all about trust and being in the right spot and our teammates hitting us. Every single game it’s every single player helping us win.”
There weren’t many mistakes in the first quarter Commack had to forget about. The Cougars (5-0) scored the game’s first four goals to take a 4-0 lead after the first quarter. Huntington (2-3) cut Commack’s lead to 6-3 at halftime but the Cougars’ lead never fell below three goals.
“We all just trust each other and that trust that we have in each other really helps us,” Hendry said. “Just trusting your teammates in the middle and looking for those wide-open options, that’s what got us those goals and it was huge to get us ahead in this.”
“They are literally the definition of a team,” coach Melissa Read said. “And it doesn’t matter who scores, who gets credit for this, that, or the other things. They are a full-fledged team from edge to edge and that’s going to get us to the goal of making the county finals.”
Read said Commack hasn’t reached a county final in program history. But she and the players believe this year’s team has the talent, experience and chemistry to do something special.
“We’ve seen other teams yell at each other and it’s taken them out and they lose the game,” Brtie said. “So we try our best to be positive and follow the goldfish rule and it really helps us.”
