Oakton Girls Lacrosse Wins State Championship

The Oakton High girls lacrosse team finished their sweep of title games, winning the AAA Virginia High School League Championship with a score of 12-7 over Langley High on Saturday after also earning the  and  earlier in the postseason.

The 2012 state title game is the Cougars' sixth appearance and fourth win under the 15-year reign of head coach Jean Counts, who came close to not coaching this team at all after she . The community rose to her defense, and Oakton High . 

That turmoil combined with their  motivated the Cougars this year.

"What happened to Coach Counts last year factored into everything," said co-captain , who scored four goals for the Cougars on Saturday. "It completely changed every single person on the team. It helped us grow, and it made us want success for ourselves. We really hold loyalty to our heart on this team." 

Counts agrees the incident formed a bond between her and the team, and said it lessened the importance of outside expectations, which in many ways made it easier for them to focus.

"It didn't really factor into how I was going to handle this team," Counts said. "We talk about intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards a lot, and that incident may have helped get the message to the girls. ... I hope they can take that away, handle challenges and obstacles they're going to come across in life with that in mind."

On Saturday, the Cougars jumped to a 3-0 lead after two goals from Rupp and one from , all unassisted. But the Langley Saxons showed they were not ready to let the Cougars take the title away from them without a fight, scoring two straight goals for a one-point deficit with 13:30 remaining in the first half.

After the Saxons defense kept the Cougars from scoring for six minutes, Tori Anderson broke through to net an unassisted goal of her own. About two minutes later, Claire Stikeleather made the most of a scoring opportunity to put the Cougars up 5-2. 

"In the beginning they had more of a tight defense. We're really good at the cutters and penetrating isos, but eventually they started pressuring out, which ended up hurting them because it helped us with our isos," Rupp said.

The Saxons added their third and last goal of the half, which Rupp answered with a scored free shot. The Cougars had a 6-3 advantage at halftime.

Rupp started the second half with her fourth unassisted goal, which the Saxons answered a minute later. Revel, on an assist from Carly Palmucci, and a free shot from Claire Stikeleather added two more goals to the Cougars' total. The Saxons had two back-to-back goals of their own, but the Cougars pulled away on two goals from Palmucci and a goal from Allison Turk on a pass from Palmucci. The Saxons netted the last goal of the game with five seconds left, putting the final score at 12-7.

The Cougars and the Saxons faced each other two other times this season, with the Cougars coming out on top in close matches in both. In the state championship, the Cougars found a way to pull ahead with a comfortable lead.

Rupp said the girls found motivation to dominate after reading some trash-talking tweets from the Langley squad. 

"We held ourselves modest and then shoved it down their throats later," Rupp said. "We came much more pumped up because of that."

The state championship win is the Cougars' first since 2008, the year before this year's seniors began high school. 

"The importance of this title is that it helps us get away from ghosts of the past," Counts said. "We left this game last year so dejected, so sad, so deflated. To come back to the game is great, it shows resilience. To win this last game, it just had to happen this way."

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