Lady Jaguars finish their season on a high note

For the Jackson High School field hockey team, the 2001 season was filled with many bumps and bruises. Growing pains can hurt. The Jaguars players can testify to that.

Yet in its final game of the season, Jackson may have set the tone for next year. The Jags posted a 2-1 victory last Friday afternoon over host Freehold Township. Hopefully the triumph can serve as a spark for a Jackson team that loses just four seniors to graduation.

"We’ve got a pretty solid group of kids coming back for next season," Coach Lori Johnson said. "We had a very young team this year, and at times we may have made a few mistakes a more experienced team might not have. But the girls stayed positive all through the tough times this year. We’re hoping to finish higher in the A South Division next season. I think we earned respect this year."

With the win, Jackson closes the season with a 5-10-3 season. Ending with a win is the way Johnson wanted to go out.

"It’s definitely a nice way to close the year," she said. "We felt it was important to go out and play hard even if it was the final game. The kids did that. We fell behind early, and we were able to recover and score a couple of unanswered goals."

With the score knotted at 1-1, senior Jesse Prince scored late in the second half to give the Jags their fifth win of the year. Following a scramble for a loose ball in front of the goal, Prince shoved in a shot past the Freehold goalie for the final margin of victory.

Freehold took an early 1-0 lead. Less than two minutes into the contest, Freehold scored to grab the early lead. But Jackson answered right back as senior Melanie Pacheco scored on a penalty shot to even the score at 1-all.

Pacheco led the Jags in scoring this year. She finished with seven goals and six assists for a total of 20 points, a career high.

"I was really glad that two of our seniors had a chance to score in their final game," Johnson said. "Melanie had a great year for us. She led our offense and played hard every game."

Jackson outshot Freehold by nearly a 2-1 margin.

"After we let up that early goal, the kids came on," Johnson said. "We outplayed them for the rest of the game. It was nice to see we could maintain the intensity throughout the entire second half."

In addition, Jackson got a big effort from its defense, especially in the closing minutes.

"We tightened things up real nice at the close of the game," Johnson said. "They had a couple of good scoring opportunities, but we did a solid job of shutting them down."

Kaplan leads gymnastics team

Freshman Kaitlyn Kaplan won all four events as Jackson posted a 104.0-88.9 victory over Toms River South.

Kaplan captured the floor exercise (9.65), uneven bars (9.725), balance beam (8.25) and the vault (9.5) to lead the Jags.

Boys’ soccer falls in SCT

The Jags hadn’t been playing their best soccer of the season entering the Shore Conference Tournament.

Jackson continued its slide last Friday in a Shore Conference Tournament game against Lacey Township.

Lacey registered two second-half goals to post a 3-1 win. The loss drops the Jags’ record to 9-6 overall.