The Lakeland High School field hockey team defeated visiting Phoebus High School 6-0 on Thursday, closing out a Lady Cavaliers regular season in which they showed substantial growth from last year.

Entering last year’s conference tournament, Lakeland was in the rare position of having a losing record — 8-9.

In 2015, their second year under the guidance of coach Cortney Parker, the Lady Cavs have finished the regular season with a record of 11-5.

“I’m really excited about it,” Parker said of her team’s growth from last year. “I’ve been blessed with a good group of girls that have been dedicated to the offseason workouts that we’ve done and practices, and I think that’s really made a huge difference between the two seasons.”

As for Lakeland’s performance on Thursday, Parker was eventually pleased with it, but not at first.

“I thought we played OK,” she said. “We just came out kind of flat.”

She noted the Lady Cavaliers were not finishing, and they were not playing fast throughout the first half.

Sophomore Alex Kinsey scored just over five minutes into the game, but Lakeland was quiet offensively for a long stretch after that.

Then, the Lady Cavs ended the half with a flurry of production. Senior Stasha Waterfield scored on an assist from senior Shannon Leonard with 4:03 remaining, and junior Kendall Lewis scored unassisted with 2:27 to go.

“They had picked it up those last few minutes, but they needed to continue throughout the rest of the second half,” Parker said.

They did, as Lewis registered her second goal of the game less than four minutes into the second half, assisted by senior Victoria Harmon.

With 18:40 left in the Senior Day game, Leonard scored with an assist from Waterfield.

“Senior Day is what everyone looks forward to, so it’s the biggest day, especially to score on,” Leonard said. “It’s a big deal. Everyone really played as a team today, and it was really apparent that everyone played for the seniors and just wanted it to be a great game for us, so it was pretty awesome.”

Leonard had been a part of three Senior Days with the Lady Cavaliers prior to this one, and she said being a focus of it now that she’s a senior was unreal.

“You never really know how it feels, you always see it, and it was just like, ‘Wow, I guess it’s me now,’” she said. “It’s weird.”

Sophomore Emily Campbell allowed post-game Senior Day festivities to get off to an early start when her unassisted goal with 13:30 remaining on the clock brought the mercy rule into effect, ending the game immediately.

Since there are only four schools in Conference 27 that have field hockey teams, Lakeland’s first game in the conference tournament will be a semifinal, and it will be against host York High School on Tuesday.

Though there are always things her team needs to work on in practice, Parker said, “I feel like we are right where we need to be.”