Delainey Sutley is not content with just being good.
“She wants to be great and wants to bring her teammates with her on that journey,” Ocean City High School girls lacrosse coach Lesley Graham said.
Sutley scored a career-high and team-leading 73 goals and 87 points, this past spring. But her dominance on the draw stood out even more. She won 155 draw controls, the most in her career. Ocean City stacks its schedule and plays tough opponents, making her stats, which included 14 assists, even more impressive.
She was named an All-American for the second straight season, the first time in program history a player earned that honor in back-to-back seasons. Only eight other players in South Jersey earned All-American status.
For the second consecutive season, Sutley is The Press Girls Lacrosse Player of the Year.
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“I think I had a pretty decent season, but I would not have made it this far without my team,” said Sutley, who is committed to play lacrosse at Rutgers University.
Sutley led the Red Raiders to their third consecutive Cape-Atlantic League Tournament title and fourth straight trip to the South Jersey Group III semifinals. The Red Raiders went 17-6 and were undefeated against CAL opponents on their way to winning the tough American Division title.
Sutley also led the Red Raiders with 20 forced turnovers. For her career, she won 414 draw controls, including 147 this year, and finished with 216 goals and 245 points.
“Honestly, the goal was to end up where I am today,” she said of how her career and senior season turned out. “I worked all the time to get where I am. All that hard work, so I am honored to be where I am. But I also had to work for it.”
Said Graham: “Whenever you watch Delainey Sutley play, everyone is like ‘Wow.’”
Winning as many draws as possible is crucial. Getting possession allows a team to keep scoring or be in position to score and prevents the other team from having a lot of opportunities of its own.
Sutley gained trust from her teammates and coaches with that dominance, and many of her goals came after she won the draw, ran downfield and scored.
“She just gets better and better every year, every game as the season goes on,” Graham said. “That is a testament to her work ethic and her passion for the game. And she doesn’t make it about her. She is looking to pass just like she is looking to go. She is grateful to be on the receiving end for a lot of her teammates so she can finish it for them.”
Sutley’s favorite memory this season was winning the CAL championship. The Red Raiders defeated Holy Spirit, which reached a state final, for the third time this season. Ocean City trailed after the first quarter. It was also the third straight season the two teams met in the championship.
“It stood out because it’s hard beating a team three times in a row, and we just had to keep our motivation up and came out with the win,”’ Sutley said.
Sutley is looking forward to her next chapter at Rutgers.
“I am super excited, but I am going to miss my teammates that I grew up with playing with since forever,” Sutley said.
Her coach will surely miss her.
“Yeah, I don’t really want to think about that,” Graham said.
But Sutley still left a lasting impact on the program.
“A state championship would be nice. A group final would be nice,” Graham said. “But not having that hardware doesn’t distract what Delainey did for this program over her four-year career. She really became a player that other players look to. She grew in her maturity and leadership and skillset.
“She was a joy to joy because she wanted to learn and wanted to get better. She taught me just as much as I taught her.”
Team of the Year
Graham took over the Ocean City program in 2020, but the season was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So this year’s squad, especially the seniors, was “uniquely special,” because the graduating players have been with Graham since her first real season, she said.
The Red Raiders were led by four seniors committed to NCAA Division I programs: Sutley, Gracie Pierce (East Carolina), Kelsea Cooke (Duquesne) and Julianna Duff (University of Rhode Island) and other strong seniors and underclassmen who helped them achieve another successful season.
Ocean City is The Press Team of the Year.
“What’s so important about (the graduating players) and why this team has been so special in recent years, and why this team in particular is so dynamic, is the commitment level, the passion, the leadership that our senior class showed and worked day in and day out and a bunch of underclassmen who wanted to work as hard as those seniors and wanted to learn from them, but also wanted to prove that they deserved to be out there,” Graham said.
“I think those things, the dynamic of upperclassmen and underclassmen and leadership and passion, really helped us form the team we had. Not to mention a number of them have been playing since the youth level. And we’ve got sisters in the team and cousins on the team. They have developed those relationships off the field that have translated to success in the field.”
Coach of the Year
After just a three-win season in 2023, Lynn Villada guided her Egg Harbor Township players to an amazing turnaround.
The Eagles finished 14-6 and won the CAL National Division title, going 12-0 against divisional opponents, and qualified for the South Jersey Group IV playoffs and the CAL Tournament.
Villada is the Coach of the Year.
“We put in a lot of work this year, especially with having a lot more competitive drills and really getting to get the girls to up their game and really needing them to fully coexist in the division this year so we could be super competitive,” she said. “And we pulled that off. When we needed to, we really did. That was a full team effort, and we only hope we can continue that for next year, as well.”
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