NOVI >> The Novi Wildcats finished off their regular season with a 16-6 win over Flint Powers on Senior Night Friday evening.

The Wildcats led from start to finish, and every goal was scored by a senior, headed by four goals from Ally Katinas and hat tricks from Mia Tanacea and Brianne Molnar.“That was really cool, and we started with every single senior on the field, nine of eleven people,” Novi head coach Kaitlyn West said.

But if the night belonged to anyone, it was Katinas, who reached a pair of milestones on the night. She reached 200 career goals with her second goal of the game, cutting across the front of net and firing in a shot just 31 seconds into the second period. She then recorded her 100th goal of the season with 1:13 to play in the period when she scored off a restart.

“It has been a super exciting year for my team and me. We’ve never played like this before, so it’s real exciting to see the team work together, come together and be ranked higher than we ever have been before,” Katinas said.

Both marks put Katinas in rarified air. Coming into this year, only 20 players in the state had scored 200 goals in a career. Similarly, there had been only 20 seasons of 100 goals (by a total of 15 different players) since MHSAA started keeping official stats in 2005. Katinas also has nearly doubled her career total this season, putting up big numbers after an injury-shortened junior year where she had piled up over 50 goals.

“It’s just so cool to see that. She obviously scores a lot of goals for herself because she’s so good at seeing the back of the net and making it happen. But as a team, they have so much depth and they get along together. So she might do that, but her team is cheering her on the whole time, and they’re also working together,” West said. “I have other girls on the bench, so when people are face guarding Ally, the other girls will come in and step up.”

Katinas, who just started playing lacrosse as a freshman, will be moving on to University of Detroit Mercy to play college lacrosse next year. But in the meanwhile, she and the Wildcats have a bit of unfinished business first. Novi’s nine seniors have led a renaissance for the program.

“The chemistry this year since we have all been playing together, it’s just been super exciting that we’re playing this good. We just go into every game excited, knowing what we can do. We just can’t wait to do even better,” Katinas said.

At 12-5, the Wildcats are having their best season since the pre-Covid era, and came into Friday night’s game ranked fourth in Division 1 and eighth overall in the state in MPR. Both are program bests for the Wildcats, who earned an opening-round bye in the state tournament. Novi will face the winner of Canton and Cass Tech on May 22.

“This is the best chance we’ve ever had of making past the first round because normally we’ll get stopped at that point. We are in what I consider one of the hardest regions in the whole state and definitely in the hardest conference. And most of our conference teams are also in our region,” West said. “I’m really optimistic. This team has a lot of variety of shooters and a lot of good defenders. So skill wise, we’re right up there.”