This story originally ran in The Standard-Times on May 31, 2003.

By Nick Tavares
Standard-Times correspondent

New Bedford's girls lacrosse team will be making its third consecutive trip to the MIAA South Sectional tournament this Monday with the hopes of advancing past the first round for the first time.

They will need to get past fifth-seeded Duxbury on the road who had worn down the Whalers earlier in the season with a late-game rally.

"The last time we played them it was 11-10 with eight minutes to go in the game" said head coach Ed Rodrigues. "We wound up giving up two penalties. Soon it was 16-10 and by the end of the game it was 19-10."

But New Bedford (11-6-1) held Duxbury close through most of the game and its hope is to stop Duxbury's potent offense early this time through allowing the Whaler's talented front line to run rampant.

Gretchen Rodrigues enters the game as the highest scorer in the state with 101 goals and 21 assists.

The offense doesn't stop there however. Shardae Gonsalves has 50 goals and 14 assists and Marcy Rebello has 27 goals and 14 assists.

"We can score" said Rodrigues. "We need to defend to stay in the game because they're right behind us in scoring.

"They're going to double-team Gretchen so we've been working on setting screens for her to get an attack going. If we can get started we're pretty hard to stop."

New Bedford is coming off the heels of its most successful season as a program improving its record six straight years.

"We've been able to close the gap with a lot of these teams that have been playing lacrosse since third grade" explained Rodrigues. "We don't have kids playing lacrosse in third grade but we've been very successful at bringing the program to a new level each year.

"The gap is closed and now we want to win a tournament game."

This story appeared on Page B4 of The Standard-Times on May 31 2003.