The Kennard-Dale girls' lacrosse team has gone out of its way to play top-level opponents this season.
Penn Manor, Manheim Township, Hempfield -- the Rams said: Bring it on. And it was brought. Kennard-Dale lost all three of those games. It's the main reason why the Rams are the No. 6 seed in the district tournament while a Susquehannock team that lost to Kennard-Dale twice is No. 4.
Both the Warriors and the Rams won home games and moved on to the quarterfinals, but Kennard-Dale will have to hit the road for Saturday's matchup against Lewisburg. Of course, if playing three of the top teams in the region helps the Rams get that much better, maybe it won't matter where they are playing.
"Before our season, our coach (Kelly Wetzel) sat down with the athletic director and scheduled some really tough teams for us to play, just so we know where we stand," said Hana Krechel (above), who scored six goals in Kennard-Dale's first-round win over Central York on Tuesday. "Taking some losses like that, at first it was frustrating and it was difficult, but I think we're good at picking ourselves up.
"After a big loss, we would talk as a team and the captains would get together and talk and we would say what we did wrong. Even though we have those three losses, they really made a big difference in our wins and they helped us to get better as a team. Playing good teams is really making us a lot better."
Kretchel said the biggest thing they learned from those losses is working together as a team.
"In a big game like that where all the girls are big and fast and strong," Krechel said, "we had to learn to trust everyone a lot better."
The loss to Hempfield, which was the most recent for the Rams, was a lot closer than the games against Penn Manor and Manheim Township, which beat Kennard-Dale by 12 and 13 goals, respectively. The Rams lost by only five to the Black Knights and Wetzel was encouraged by what he saw.
"We were comeptitive with them," Wetzel said of the Hempfield game. "At first, the girls were a little -- they didn't think they had a chance. I think they realized at halftime that they could play with them."
Wetzel said it puts the Rams in a good place heading into the quarterfinals.
"We've learned what we have to do to win," Wetzel said. "We've learned to move the ball better. We still have a ways to go, but we look for the open player. We try to pass it, instead of running it the whole time... We've learned from the losses. We've learned we can play with most teams if we adapt and move the ball in the air. "
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