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Down three goals and struggling to find the back of the cage after one quarter of the Missouri Scholastic Lacrosse Association girls state championship, Abby Finnegan was not going to let her team go down without a fight.

“When we got down, Abby took it upon herself to rally the troops and get the kids back in it,” Cor Jesu coach Andrew Shipp said. “She's like, ‘We are not gonna end this way, and we are all going to get it together and go play our hearts out.’ And she left everything on that field, put forth all of the effort in the world and it translated into all the other kids kind of rising to the occasion with her.”

The Chargers rallied from that early 4-1 deficit to knock off defending state champion Eureka 13-10 and claim their second MSLA title and first since 2016.

Much of that had to do with Finnegan, who completed a standout season with one final big game for Cor Jesu.

Not long after the season, Finnegan was one of two area players to attain all-state, all-academic and All-American status. And she can another one to the list — All-Metro girls lacrosse player of the year.

“I think I played pretty good, pretty consistent, which was something I was trying to work on,” Finnegan said. “A lot of my teammates helped with my success because the draw controls and stuff wouldn't have been done without our freshman Paige (Ferris) winning it out of the circle and putting it where we knew it was gonna go. Overall the season went really well, but it was definitely due to a lot of help from my teammates.”

Finnegan finished seventh in the area scoring race with 97 points and was fifth with 85 goals. She also led the area with 155 draw controls and 120 ground balls.

The goal, draw control and ground ball totals were all new single-season Cor Jesu records.

“So, she was outstanding,” Shipp said. “She did all of the small things incredibly well.”

It was the draw control where she really made a noticeable difference down the stretch of the title game win over Eureka.

Taking over for Ferris, Finnegan went to toe-to-toe with one of the area’s best in Emily Emerson and gave the Chargers some key possessions in the final quarter, including on what turned out to be the game-winning goal and on one of the final possessions that helped melt away most of the remaining time on the clock.

“Absolutely perfect timing for her,” Shipp said. “But most of her time was spent out on the circle of the draw, where she was able to use her ice hockey skills to translate into ground balls and draw controls.”

Ice hockey is where Finnegan got her start in sports before she moved on to boys lacrosse and then finally girls lacrosse come high school time.

Finnegan’s time on the ice and on the field with the rough and tumble boys helped bring out the aggressive side of her that she still likes to utilize with the Chargers.

“With my background in boys lacrosse, I think a lot of my aggression comes from there,” she said. “I'd say I play pretty aggressively, definitely always trying to drive the net. I definitely like just getting low on every ground ball because they're gonna destroy you. When I feel contact, I can tell where the person is and then I can use that to roll off of them and what not.”

With personal accolades and a somewhat unexpected to run to a state championship as a No. 5 seed, Finnegan’s next journey will take her across the state to Kansas City, where she will attend Rockhurst to study biomedical engineering and play lacrosse.

“I really like their campus, and the Kansas City area is really nice,” she said. “Everybody on the team was super welcoming when I went out there and every single person I talked to was always willing to help me in any way that they could.”

Shipp has no doubt Finnegan’s superb work ethic will translate well to the next level.

“I mean, we won a state championship, so you think you’d take a week off and enjoy it. She's back up here at 7 a.m. at the field firing off 100 shots as fast as she can,” Shipp said. “She's up here shooting every day from 7 to 8 a.m. trying to get herself ready to go play college. So, where she is at, she doesn't think it's good enough, and she's gonna keep going and try to be better. That's exactly what she did all offseason (prior to her senior year).”