North Shore girls lacrosse's Natalie Yoo scores tying and winning goals in victory over Lynbrook

Less than 24 hours earlier, Natalie Yoo was standing behind the goal with a lacrosse stick in her hands, working on perfecting a run from behind the cage and ripping a shot into the net with her father by her side. When she was in the middle of the drill, she had this funny feeling that the work would have immediate dividends.

It didn’t take her long to be proven correct.

The North Shore freshman scored the tying and winning goals off runs from behind the cage, exactly what she was practicing the night before, to deliver host North Shore an 11-10 victory over Lynbrook in non-conference girls lacrosse action on Saturday morning.

“I just love working outside of practices,” Yoo said. “My dad’s really into it also, he always wants me to train outside of practice, so we got out last night just to work on it. It’s also our quality time, so I was just having fun with him and messing around, and then it worked in the game.”

Yoo scored the tying goal with 2:29 left in the fourth quarter before scoring the winner with 1:34 left as North Shore completed a six-goal comeback. The Vikings trailed 9-3 in the third quarter and 9-6 entering the final period.

“I’ve worked on it so much the last couple of days, I knew I had to finish it,” Yoo said. “I didn’t want to go into overtime, so I thought if I wasn’t going to score there, I never would and I was going to regret it for a couple of days because I just linger on it.”

Yoo finished with three goals and three assists and Alexandra Basile added three goals for North Shore (3-6).

“We always forget she’s just a ninth grader,” coach Juliana Keenan said. “We put a lot of pressure on her, but it’s good pressure and she wants it. She knows she has the talent and the skill to direct and lead the offense and I think she just needs to never doubt herself.”

Lynbrook (4-2) outscored North Shore 6-1 in the second quarter to take a 7-3 lead at halftime. Brooke Mazzei scored back-to-back goals to extend Lynbrook’s lead to 9-3 with 6:25 left in the third quarter. Basile scored with 5:43 left in the third quarter to start North Shore’s run of scoring eight of the game’s final nine goals.

Erin Lily La Rosa had two free-position goals over the final four minutes of the third quarter to cut Lynbrook’s lead to 9-6. Basile had two goals in the fourth quarter and Elizabeth Aurre scored before Yoo’s final two goals. Lila Archer had two first-half goals for North Shore.

“We just had to turn the switch and once we (started scoring), it really got everyone going and made us realize we can really do it,” Basile said. “Everyone thinks it, but we had to apply it, and I think that helped make everyone know they can do it.”

“It happened a little later than I would have liked,” said Keenan with a laugh, “but they always end up showing up for each other and finding a way to get through it. And I’m really proud of how they got through it today.”

North Shore plays in Conference I in Nassau’s ability-based conference alignments, so victories have been tough to find for a younger team. But the Vikings hope Saturday’s win will spark a few more.

“I think we really needed this,” Yoo said. “We were going through a really rough patch and this kind of shows we can do it. Even when we were six goals down, we were able to climb back up and get the win, so I think this will help us in future games as well.”