WILTON — All good things must come to an end. After a 20-game win streak without a loss, as well as South-West Conference regular season and tournament championships, Newtown High School’s girls’ lacrosse team entered into the Class L State Tournament as the No. 6 seed and made it to the quarterfinals against No. 3 seed Wilton on June 1.

But a hot start for the Warriors would be too much for the Nighthawks to overcome, as they took the victory by a final score of 15-7.

Despite the loss, Head Coach Maura Fletcher is proud of the effort her team brought on game day.

“We’re the six seed playing against the three seed, one of the top three teams in the state and one of the top teams in the country,” she said. “We knew what we were up against, we wanted to play as hard as we could, maybe come out and surprise them out here, but top to bottom, they are stacked with great players.”

Despite the score, the game was certainly not the Warriors to take. The Nighthawks would strike first with Summer Harrell getting the first goal of the contest just over three minutes played in the first half. Wilton scored two goals not even a minute later, but Brooke Bulkley tied the game at two apiece.

However, the Warriors began firing on all cylinders, collecting seven more goals throughout the duration of the first half. Bulkley would pick up her second goal, and it would be a 9-3 ballgame entering the second half.

From there, Wilton put the game out of reach, with six more goals to take a commanding 15-3 lead with just under 13 minutes left to play. But with their backs against the wall and the glimmer of hope starting to dwindle, the Nighthawks knew they did not want their season to end this way.

Newtown would slowly but surely creep their way back into the game. Bella Gerace scored back-to-back goals in under a minute, with Bulkley securing a hat-trick with her third goal of the contest, and Ava Mitchell picking up another. It looked to be that the Nighthawks were playing like their old selves, something that Fletcher was proud to see.

“It was nice for them to continue working hard,” she said. “It was only a six-goal game at halftime, just they came out real quick in the second half. All of a sudden, it was six goals, then it was eight goals, then it was ten goals, so we told them ‘you just gotta fight back one goal at a time.’ ... We finally got some possessions, as it was really tough to get possessions against this team, so I’m proud of them for continuing to fight into the second half.”

Despite their best efforts, the comeback would come up just short.

Reflecting on the overall season, the team still has so much to be proud of with all of the accomplishments with a young roster of players with little to no high school experience.

“I just think we’ve come a long way from the beginning,” senior captain Allie Bradley said. “We have a really young team, we had a bunch of sophomores coming in, and we just clicked really well and trusted one another, and I think that helped us get to an undefeated season until today.”

Although the team is losing only two seniors in Gerace and Bradley, the team will certainly have big shoes to fill in the future with all that these players were able to contribute during their time during the program and more.

“The two senior captains that we have were three-sport athletes and three-sport captains. They were just great leaders on and off the field,” Fletcher said. “They just do everything that they need to do, they’re great communicators, they’re really solid teammates, and we’re really gonna miss them next year.”

With much of the roster returning for Newtown, the team will look to try and create a dynasty for girls’ lacrosse in the SWC and state levels next season and beyond.

Owen Brown is a student at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Mass., and is doing an internship with The Newtown Bee.