By:

Ted Sarneso


Saturday, June 14, 2025 | 11:46 PM

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Pine-Richland girls lacrosse coach Shannen Wood wishes the team’s season had ended differently.

After putting together another outstanding season, making a third WPIAL championship game appearance and a third straight trip to the PIAA state playoffs, the Rams’ season came to an end in a 18-3 loss at the hands of Manheim Township in the PIAA second round.

“I give credit to Manheim. They’re a phenomenal program,” Wood said. “The biggest thing for us was we self-combusted offensively. I think our girls weren’t anticipating how fast Manheim was. The first quarter we were already down six or seven goals, and that’s a tough deficit to come back from.”

For a team with offensive firepower like Pine-Richland (19-4), which scored 16.2 goals a game in the regular season, being held to three goals was very uncharacteristic.

“That was not a reflection of this team or our program,” Wood said. “But for us to make it to states three years in a row is a phenomenal accomplishment.”

The Rams’ road to a third straight PIAA playoff appearance began in March in the first game of the season against Upper St. Clair, which in Wood’s mind was a tone setter.

“That is a big rivalry for us, and the girls wanted to come out and play well against them,” Wood said. “Playing them first was sort of like, all right, how do we want this season to go? And our girls came out guns ablazin’ and they wanted to win.”

The Rams took down Upper St. Clair, 17-6, in that opening game en route to a 6-0 start, averaging 18.3 goals a game.

The team’s only two regular season losses came at the hands of Olentangy and Olentangy Liberty, two schools in Ohio, on April 4 and 5.

The Rams try to do a trip every other year and two years ago, they played some teams in Rochester, N.Y., where Wood is originally from.

“That’s the only way our program gets better is by playing these different programs, different teams,” said Wood. “I was really trying to be strategic about our schedule this past season, which I give thanks to our athletic director as well for helping me create the best schedule I can to help these girls get better. It also served as a team bonding experience, for them to be together for those two or three days.”

What might have hurt the Rams is a large group of players are in different clubs and school programs, and that trip to Ohio came over spring break when a lot of the players were out of town on a Future Business Leaders of America trip.

“It was challenging because a lot of our starters weren’t there, but it was also good for the program because it gave a lot of girls who weren’t on varsity or weren’t getting a lot of time a chance to step up into leadership roles,” Wood added. “It also gave us a chance to test out a new defense.”

Coming out of the road trip to Ohio, the Rams put together another winning streak, winning their next 10 games and claiming a Section 2-3A title with a record of 8-0.

They also locked up the top overall seed and a first-round bye in the WPIAL Class 3A playoffs.

As a competitor, Wood loved that her team went on another winning streak to close out the regular season.

“For these girls and these coaches, we put so much time in that lacrosse is literally our lives,” Wood said. “Having a great record that reflects the hard work we put into it I think is awesome.”

After dispatching Shady Side Academy, 16-5, in the second round and beating Moon, 16-6, in the semifinals, Pine-Richland faced off against No. 3 seed Mt. Lebanon in the championship game.

Two weeks earlier, the Rams thumped the Blue Devils, 20-8, and they felt really good heading into the title game.

Up 12-7 in the third quarter, it looked to be all sewn up for the Rams, but Mt. Lebanon fought back and came away with a 15-14 win.

“We weren’t firing on all cylinders,” Wood said. “When our defense would step up, our offense couldn’t capitalize and vice versa. The hard part is Mt. Lebanon is a great school, a great program. They are a team that capitalizes on mistakes, and they capitalized where we couldn’t.”

It was the second straight year that the Rams lost to the Blue Devils in the WPIAL championship game.

“The loss hurt, especially for our group of seniors,” Wood said. “That was their big goal: to come away with another championship before they graduated. I know how much that upset them. As a coaching staff, we felt like we let them down.

“To this day, we’re asking what could we have done differently. But it is what it is. At the end of the day, we still had a great season, had a winning record. Every team is going to lose eventually.”

Even with their confidence slightly shaken, the Rams headed into the state playoffs looking for ways to learn and grow from the loss to Mt. Lebanon.

“When we came out and played State College in the first round, we kind of proved to ourselves that we’re a really good team. We just need to be consistent across the board for that to happen,” Wood said.

The Rams took care of State College, 15-10, and a couple of players reached some important milestones.

Senior midfielder Kendyll Jerry reached 100 career goals and sophomore midfielder Claire Mill surpassed 100 career points.

But those weren’t the only Rams to reach milestones this season.

Senior midfielder Madeline Mill and junior attacker Cate Gentile each surpassed 200 career goals and 300 career points and sophomore attacker Mallory Boivin also surpassed 200 career points.

“Those girls were our top five scoring or assisting threats,” Wood said. “Yes, they have a ton of goals, but a ton of assists. They were always looking to set up their teammates as well, which was huge.”

During the year, Gentile led the team with 88 goals and 47 assists. Boivin was second in goals with 85 and had 42 helpers. Madeline Mill was third on the team with 64 goals and added 24 assists.

Continuing down the scoring chart, Claire Mill had 52 goals and 13 assists and Jerry produced 31 goals and 19 assists.

“Our offense has scored 800 goals over the last few years. The offense has been very effective,” Wood said. “To have such massive milestones from multiple players throughout the season is a reflection of their hard work.”

What really gets overlooked with how explosive the Rams were on offense was how dominant they were on defense.

Including the playoffs, the Rams scored 15.5 goals a game, but they were second by only a tenth to Upper St. Clair in goals against a game with 7.3.

“We had a lot of people step up this year,” Wood said. “Erica Waite, a four-year varsity starter, was the backbone to the defense. Bridget Gilardi was a returning starter from last year. Lucy Kucinic, Ella Tarasovich and Reis Valenty were the three that would rotate between. We were really good with communication, one versus one, and we were a lot more aggressive this year.”

Kucinic was the team’s rookie of the year.

“She really stepped up, and I rarely subbed her off the field,” Wood said. “She filled some big shoes when she was in there.”

Every defender had their strong suits. If one of their players were weak in one area, the Rams were fortunate enough to have another player that excelled in that area.

“We were able to move players around to be adaptive to whatever an opposing team was playing,” Wood said. “Our midfielders were not only catalysts on offense, but came up with a lot of turnovers as well. They were the workhorses of the program.”

In net for the Rams, senior goaltender Claire Dosch eclipsed 300 saves this season.

Dosch also missed some games due to her commitment with other school activities, and sophomore Cara Murray stepped up and made some big saves for the Rams.

“Cara played in our Mars game and she was crucial to our victory in that game,” Wood remarked. “Both goalies are phenomenal.”

The Rams are graduating a lot from a squad that has played plenty of postseason games, including two seniors along the midfield, two defenders, two attackers and the starting goalie.

“We have a lot of positions open as we go into next season,” Wood said. “That being said, we have a lot of returning talent, which I’m very excited about.”

Madeline Mill will play at Pitt next year. Jerry will be playing at Youngstown State and Waite at the University of Charleston in West Virginia.

“I think of Madeline and Kendyll,” Wood said. “They both know their hustle and their grit is very hard to replace. I have nothing but positive thoughts on the girls who will be replacing them and girls who will be stepping up. We have a lot of leaders on our team, so I know we’ll be led to a winning mentality and record.”

Other graduating seniors include MacKay Young, Addie Robb, Sara Irwin, who was injured this season, and Dosch.

The only junior who is committed right now is Cate Gentile. She’ll be playing at Virgina Tech.

Wood said there are some things that might look different next year than they have in that past, but that’s just fine with her.

“We have had a great program the last three years, and I don’t see it not being great moving forward,” she said. “The girls hold themselves to a high standard, and I know they will go above and beyond my expectations to keep up the high intensity and winning that Pine-Richland is known for.”

Tags: Pine-Richland