Emma Blloshmi, Lacey Downey team up to lead West Babylon to big win
West Babylon's Emma Blloshmi looks to get around West Islip's Natasha Franchina in the first half during a Suffolk girls lacrosse game on Monday at West Islip. Credit: Bob Sorensen
It just wasn’t the same for Lacey Downey without her running mate, Emma Blloshmi, on the lacrosse field last year.
Blloshmi missed last season with a torn ACL and recovered this February to join the West Babylon girls basketball team’s run to the state Class A semifinals. She and Downey, close friends and teammates since middle school, missed two full varsity seasons playing together due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Blloshmi’s injury.
They are certainly making up for the lost time.
Blloshmi had seven goals and an assist and Downey had five goals and four assists to lead West Babylon to a 13-5 victory over host West Islip in a Suffolk Division II girls lacrosse game on Monday. All four of Downey’s assists came on Blloshmi's goals.
“It looks like we haven’t missed a beat out there,” Blloshmi said. “I look for Lacey whenever she has the ball. I feel like we lock eyes and I know when to cut. It works.”
It sure worked on Monday, as the two combined for 12 of the team’s 13 goals.
“I think our energy is contagious,” Blloshmi said. “And if one of us is having an off game, the other will pick the other up. If Lacey is the feeder one day, I’ll be the scorer and vice versa and it seems to work well.”
West Babylon (7-5) led 9-3 at halftime after Downey found Blloshmi for a goal with seven seconds left.
“At this point, we’ve been playing together long enough where whenever I have the ball, I’m looking for her the whole entire time,” Downey said. “And [when she] gets open and cuts, I’ll feed it to her and she scores like 90 percent of the time.”
Coach Colleen Kilgus credited Downey’s lacrosse IQ, calling it “one of the best in the game I’ve seen since I’ve been coaching.” Downey, a junior committed to Boston College, has 297 varsity points and 50 goals with 49 assists this year.
“They complement each other very well,” Kilgus said. “Lacey sees the field really well, Emma dodges really well. … To have that and Emma with her speed and explosiveness and the way she dodges to the net just kind of makes them unstoppable.”
Jaimey Hill had two goals and an assist for West Islip (4-7).
West Babylon won the Suffolk Class B championship last season despite Blloshmi’s injury. And after a slow start with Downey, Blloshmi and other starters as key members of the girls basketball team’s state tournament run extending into mid-March, West Babylon has won four straight with the postseason approaching.
“I always say our team is a puzzle,” Kilgus said. “So figuring out the puzzle pieces is a work in progress and I think we are starting to put the puzzle together just in time for the playoffs.”
