Some played together more than a decade. Now Aquinas girls’ lacrosse yearns for closure
They didn’t think about their last game in the moment they learned their season — and high school careers — was ending.
The seniors from St. Thomas Aquinas girls’ lacrosse team gathered on the gigantic “A” at midfield at Brian Piccolo Memorial Stadium, expecting to break down their practice the same way they had done for years.
They thought they were going to wrap up practice and talk about when they’d be back on the field next. Instead, they found devastation.
More than two months later, Kaitlyn Michaud remembers the moment — and the specific words — precisely. “I’m so sorry, seniors,” Kevin Gilligan told his players, “but this is actually last practice — we just found out — until further notice.”
“Everybody’s face just went blank and everybody just started crying,” Michaud said.
“I don’t even think I could look at anyone because I was just so devastated,” said Caroline Stefans, another of the Raiders’ 11 seniors.
The last thing any of them thought about was the way they left the field for the last time as a group.
Exactly a week earlier, St. Thomas Aquinas traveled up to Central Florida for the biggest game of the season so far.
A meeting with Oviedo Hagerty was going to be a referendum on the Raiders’ ability and their first major test in a season with state-championship aspirations.
St. Thomas Aquinas fell behind early and then pummeled Hagerty, 14-6. The Raiders walked to the bus silently in single-file lines, like they always do.
As soon as they boarded, the celebration began. They spent the next three hours enjoying the moment, jumping around in the back seats, singing along to favorites like “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, and “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I. Their final, enduring memory was a celebration unlike any they’d had since their freshman seasons.
“We got on that bus and we were just screaming our heads off, singing to songs and we were all dancing,” said Michaud, who has signed a national letter of intent to play for the Elon Phoenix. “That’s honestly our favorite part is just feeling that adrenaline and we’re just all together, singing our favorite songs. That’s really what it’s all about, being a team and enjoying all those memories together.”
As freshmen, most of them united in Fort Lauderdale. Five played varsity for the Raiders as freshmen. The rest worked their way up to the top team in the next few years. Four have signed national letters of intent to play at the Division I level next year.
For three consecutive years, they dealt with close call after close call in the Florida High School Athletic Association postseason. Last year, St. Thomas Aquinas limped to the Region 4 championship before getting blown out by Delray Beach American Heritage with seven starters sidelined by injuries. In 2018, they also reached the region final before losing to American Heritage. The close call in 2017 is the one which still sticks with the Raiders’ Class of 2020, though.
They were just freshmen, some along for the ride and some key contributors, as St. Thomas Aquinas made it all the way to the state championship. Michaud, Stefans, and attackers Logan Tingley, Gabi Cash and Ellie Riegner spent their freshman seasons with the varsity team, which came just two minutes away from winning a state title before Orlando Bishop Moore scored twice in the last 1:55 to force overtime. The Raiders got through the first overtime unscathed, then fell on a walk-off goal with just 13.5 seconds left in double overtime.
“I felt so helpless when we lost,” said Stefans, who will play for the Navy Midshipmen next year. “I think our whole class dedicated our next few years to those seniors and I wanted to win so badly, and I think this year could’ve been our year, too.”
The win in Oviedo suggested St. Thomas Aquinas was pointed in the right direction. In just six games, the Raiders scored 108 goals and surrendered 22.
Michaud had 19 goals, the second most on the team. Riegner, who will play for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights next year, led the team with 13 assists. The 11 seniors accounted for more than 43 percent of St. Thomas Aquinas’ scoring in the abbreviated season with Michaud, Riegner, Stefans and Tingley, who has signed with the High Point Panthers, all ranking among the Raiders’ top six goal scorers.
Those four and Cash, who didn’t play in 2020 because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament, quickly entrenched themselves as fixtures at St. Thomas Aquinas. Riegner, Stefans, Tingley and Cash — plus defender Sophie Speno, who wasn’t on varsity until her sophomore year — had played together for years already and their chemistry was central to the Raiders’ success. They carved out their own small clique within the team and learned from the veterans while still being some of the most vocal members of the team. Those bus-trip singalongs and dance parties have been there since the beginning — an enthusiasm they learned from the upperclassmen when they were young and hope to pass on to the next generation of underclassmen.
“I want them to learn to not give up and literally play every game like it’s your last because you don’t know if a global pandemic is going to happen or not,” Stefans said with a laugh, “learning to push every game like it could be your last, so you have to play hard.”
It took some time for the silence to break on the day St. Thomas Aquinas found out its season was over. Seniors tried to process the ends of their high school careers. The longtime teammates realized they would almost certainly never play another game together.
Before the team dispersed for perhaps the final time, Speno found heard some news. She had gotten into the University of Georgia, her dream school. For the Raiders, it was time to celebrate one last time.
Other notables
▪ Pine Crest, which reached the region semifinals last season, finished the year as the No. 4 team in Florida, according to MaxPreps.com. Lizzie Kaplan, who was the Miami Herald’s Broward County Player of the Year in 2019 and has signed with the Columbia Lions, was one of four seniors on the team, along with Chloe Maister, Jordan Vital and Gwyneth Bishara.
▪ Ransom Everglades, which went to the region semifinals in 2019, finished the year as the top-ranked team in Miami-Dade County, led by Sophie Antezana, the Herald’s reigning Miami-Dade County Player of the Year, and fellow senior Gabrielle Pena.
▪ Flanagan senior Meltonique Bowen is coming off a 47-goal season, which earned her first-team all-county honors. Teammate Diane Dohler was a second-team all-county selection, too.
▪ Palmetto’s Sofia Aguirre and Shannyn Cullen were both coming off first-team all-county seasons, and had the Panthers positioned as a top-10 team in South Florida as seniors.
▪ Coral Reef’s Amanda Fernandez and Abigail Siff were both first-team all-county selections as juniors in 2019.
