LADUE – The John Burroughs girls lacrosse team knew the pressure was coming.
Not only the pressure involved in playing in a state final four on their home field, but also the pressure of traps and double-teams employed by a Cor Jesu team against a Bombers’ squad with four freshman starters.
“We knew that if we could get around them, that next slide was going to be pretty far away and we could burn them,” John Burroughs senior Annie Calhoon said. “We tried to use that to our advantage.”
Calhoon and her John Burroughs teammates were clinical in handling the Chargers’ defensive pressure in earning a convincing 16-8 win over Cor Jesu in a Missouri Scholastic Lacrosse Association semifinal matchup Thursday at Leland Field.
John Burroughs (14-3), which reached its first state title game since 2014, will face Eureka (15-1) in the championship tilt at noon Saturday at Leland Field on the campus of John Burroughs.
Cor Jesu (12-7) will face MICDS (10-7) at 10 a.m. in the third-place game.
From the outset, the Bombers invited a second Cor Jesu defender to attack them and then made their moves. First, Calhoon split a pair of Chargers to earn a free-position goal. Then, after two Cor Jesu players charged Rosalie Tasker behind the goal, she slipped between them, dropped the ball, picked it up on a bounce and scored as John Burroughs built a quick five-goal lead.
“That’s definitely something we’ve been working on, recognizing when you need to pull it out and when you can split it,” John Burroughs coach Meghan DiGiulio said. “Knowing the type of opponents we could play, with high pressure, aggressive defenses, it’s something we really focused on heading into postseason.”
Cor Jesu senior Anna Loeffelman tried to power a Chargers’ comeback. After being stopped on a free position attempt by John Burroughs goalie Sahana Madala, Loeffelman found the rebound and tucked it into the net. When she burst through the middle of the Bombers’ defense to score, the deficit was cut to 7-4.
The first seven goals for John Burroughs were scored by either juniors or seniors. The rest of the first half belonged to the freshmen.
The ‘Fab Four’ as coined by John Burroughs athletic director Peter Tasker, took the lead shown by the upperclassmen to attack the Cor Jesu pressure. Jane Dunaway drove to the goal to score, then intercepted a pass on the defensive end and set up fellow freshman Katy Chapman.
When freshman Kate Logsdon located Tasker cutting through the middle of the defense, the Bombers had built a 10-4 lead late in the first half.
In a regular-season matchup on May 11, John Burroughs led Cor Jesu by six goals before hanging on to win in overtime. The Bombers made sure that another dramatic finish was not in the future.
Senior Nadia Steinle, who scored the first goal of the game 80 seconds into the contest, repeated her feat in the first minute of the second half. She followed it with the prettiest goal of the game, leaping to full extension to catch a ball near the cage, then making a quick spin past two defenders while switching to her left hand to score.
Reese Rafferty became the fourth freshman on the Bombers’ scoresheet moments later.
“As a team, we talked about making it count in every aspect, every play, every draw, every shot, and when we had the momentum, we were able to keep it going,” Steinle said.
Steinle, Calhoon and Tasker each netted four goals for the Bombers, which won their 12th consecutive game.
And defensively, junior Katharine Pruett led a suffocating unit that caused turnovers and cleared the ball ahead to an offense that stayed in its groove. John Burroughs did not allow the lead to dip below a five-goal margin in the second half while holding the Chargers to their lowest goal total against an area team since May 3 when Wentzville held them to six goals.
“We had to unite as a team, everything was on the line,” Pruett said. “We talked about our slides and we were there for each other.”
Loeffelman scored five of the eight goals for Cor Jesu, which was playing in its first state semifinal since 2017.
For the Bombers’ girls lacrosse team, a state championship game appearance has been nine years in the making. The ability to join other John Burroughs programs that have reached state title games is an important milestone.
“As a middle schooler and even throughout high school, we always see other (Burroughs) sports teams making it to state,” Calhoon said. “It’s a different momentum and energy we have this year and it’s played out beautifully for us.”
Steinle added, “I’m really proud of how far we’ve come.”
