The 28 total goals scored in Tuesday's girls' lacrosse game between Fairfield-Warde and Norwalk might indicate a purely offensive battle. But Courtney Walklet and the determined Warde defense have to take major credit for the Mustangs' 16-12 victory that upped their record to 5-7 and kept their hopes for postseason play alive.

"We came out strong and I think in the second half we slacked a little," said Warde tri-captain Steph Pola. "Overall it was pretty competitive."

The Warde offense emerged early, opening the scoring with Arielle Berger's free position goal early in the second minute of play. Bear star midfielder Nicole Shusdock set the competitive tone by promptly answering with her first of seven goals for the game.

After Morgan Brown added a goal from point-blank range, Bear attack wing Olga Sidiropoulos tied the score at 2-2 with a free position shot at the six-minute mark. Then the Warde offense went into high gear.

In the next nineteen minutes, Pola (seven goals) scored three times and Rachel Friedman her four goals times as the Mustangs combined their swift midfield and tough defensive checking to score seven of the next nine goals for a 9-4 halftime lead.

The Bears were not without opportunities, but

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Walklet and her deep defenders Julie Chieffalo, Alison Ercolano, and Lissy Thibault kept Norwalk largely at bay.

Shusdock opened the second-half scoring, her 99th and 100th career goals closing the Bears to 9-6, as Walklet rejected a free position attempt by Bear tri-captain Leyla Kuz-Dworzak (3 goals).

"[Walklet] made some good saves and then they came back down and scored on us," said Norwalk head coach Al Morgenthaler. "We couldn't score on the free position shots. They were scoring on theirs, we couldn't score on ours. That's the bottom line."

The Mustangs pushed their advantage to 13-6 with four consecutive goals, the first by Meg Pengue sprinting across the face of the Norwalk goal, and then three in a row from Pola.

Then the unthinkable happened. Aggressive play earned Mustang midfielders Friedman and Allie Davis their second yellow cards, and they watched about half of the second period from the sidelines.

"The calls go either way and you have to change your game to the way the refs are going to call it," said Pengue, whose teaming with both Friedman and Davis had blunted the Norwalk attack. "Obviously we didn't react fast enough to how the refs were calling the checks in the second half."

Down two players, the Mustangs had to dig deep to fend off the attacking Bears. Luckily, the Warde bench could provide support for the exhausted regulars.

"We had freshmen in there during that time and we were still a very strong team," said Warde head coach Liz Mosher. "It's not just our star seniors. It felt good as a coach to see the team work together like that."

"The freshmen stepped up," said Pola. "Alex Kelley and Taylor Buyman and Maggie Winstead. They got the job done. Everyone's important on the field. It helps to have a bench, especially in times when we needed it like then."

Norwalk had narrowed the Mustangs' lead to 14-11 when Pola took matters into her own hands again, scoring her final goal on a dash through the Norwalk defense.

Norwalk scored a feistiness goal with 37 seconds left and Pengue, not to be outdone, added Warde's sixteenth just before the final buzzer.

"We could have held it and just let the clock run down but they had scored the goal previous to that," said Pengue. "I wanted us to go out with the last goal, proving that we're going away with the win."

The win keeps the Mustangs' hopes for a state tournament berth alive. They need to win three of their final four games, with their first a match with Darien on Friday.

"We haven't made states two years in a row," said Pola, turning an eye to posterity. "It's important for us make it there especially for the girls who are still staying. They will have gone once and have the experience they need to go deep into the tournament."