Burroughs Sweeps Up Ladue With 4-1 Field Hockey Win

In a spirited rivalry, dating back to the start of high school field hockey, Burroughs won out over visiting Ladue 4-1 in a well contested game on the Bombers artificial turf Thursday. With that, Burroughs improved to 5-2 and Ladue tumbled to 5-3. While Burroughs was idle all week, the Rams were playing their third game and beat Riverview just 24 hours earlier, 9-0.

Sometimes goal keeping gets overlooked. Coach Meredith Thorpe has had the luxury of the tandem team of Abby Frerotte and Liz Rill, both seniors the past two years. They switch up, each taking half a game.

They support each other, and like it that way.

“We change up a lot. We try and figure what’s best for the team. Our goal is real simple, we like to win,” said Rill.

Would they prefer one main keeper like many of their opponent’s do. “I think every goal keeper would vote for herself. I think we work well together,” said Rill.

“We have good competition to better each other,” said Frerotte. “In practice we say things ‘like I gotta do that too.’”

“This is the healthiest system we could possibly have,” said Frerotte.

For most keepers the biggest enemy is boredom. Often, the play is far down at the other end of the field.

“You yell at your players, you support the team,” said Rill who had the second half duties versus the Rams.

Ladue drew first blood on a long shot from senior and leading scorer Elise Pellett some 17 minutes into the game. But Burroughs took the fight to the Rams the rest of the way, outscoring them 4-0  after the initial Ladue goal.

Bomber goals were recorded first by Claire Sweetman, then Katherine Fox, Katie Schmid and Abby Martone who polished off the Rams getting the fourth goal late in the game.

Thorpe liked what she saw, especially from her keepers.

“We are playing well. We hadn’t played in a week so it was good to get out there and have some good practices. Ladue is a strong and physical team and I thought we responded well to that.”

Charlotte Martin, their four year star is at Northwestern. “That’s the beautiful thing about this team. You’d love to have a super star but this is a group of girls playing for one and another.”

Ladue’s coach Barb Dwyer knows there a lot more action remaining in the fall season.

“We felt like first we were on the attack then we just ran out of gas. We have a number of our players out with injuries.  We have two with concussions, one with a back injury and one just coming back from mono.”

“This was Liz Pellet’s first game back and we’re just struggling out there,” said Dwyer.” The girls are working hard, we’re not giving up,” she said.