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Aspen High School senior Charlotte Howie tries to keep hold of the ball during a girls lacrosse game against Durango on Tuesday, March 19, 2019, on the AHS turf. (Photo by Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times).
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times -
Aspen High School sophomore Kylie Kenny reaches out to haul in a pass during the girls lacrosse against Durango on Tuesday, March 19, 2019, on the AHS turf. (Photo by Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times).
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
After three postponed games and roughly 50 hours of practice time — not all of it outside — the Aspen High School girls lacrosse team finally got to play a game Tuesday when it hosted Durango. Any thoughts of the Skiers being out of shape or a bit rusty because of the lack of game action didn’t linger long.
“It comes down to being confident in the work you’ve put in,” AHS coach Amanda Trendell said. “Just putting it together. We’ve put in a lot of work, and I think that showed.”
Aspen unloaded early and often against the Demons, scoring at a clip of about a goal a minute early in the first half. The Skiers led 9-0 by the 12-minute mark and took a 12-0 lead into the locker room.
Eight goals later and Aspen walked away with a 20-0 win in its long-delayed season opener. Aspen beat Durango 13-4 a season ago.
“We were really excited to play,” AHS senior Charlotte Howie said. “We were going out confident, but not cocky, like our coach always says. We played Durango last year and it was similar results, but we still wanted to come out hard and I think we did.”
Howie led the way with five goals, although it was a fairly balanced attack. Senior Kate Citron had four and junior Hayley Heinecken three, while senior Sabrina Turbidy and sophomore Kylie Kenny had two each. Four others score once.
“The big thing is we had multiple different scorers and that is something I really pushed last year,” Trendell said. “Again, something that will propel us this year is to make sure we have a multi-faceted and multi-threat offense.”
Durango fell to 0-2 with the loss, while Aspen improved to 1-0.
The Skiers will play again Wednesday at Steamboat Springs before heading out on spring break.
“We are really looking to go far this year and it’s our goal to go win a state championship,” Howie said. “We are really looking for that.”
Aspen will take a group of 21 players to California for five days, where they will play Cate School, located just outside of Santa Barbara, on Saturday. Over the break, AHS also will scrimmage Dakota Ridge. The Eagles were preseason No. 6 but have since dropped out of the polls after three straight losses to start the season.
The AHS boys lacrosse team will host Vail Mountain School at 4 p.m. Wednesday in one of its make-up games.