This season, the Panthers sit atop Conference 4 with a perfect 8-0 league record and are currently 8-2 overall.

The big difference?

Chloe Luther.

The Gowanda senior missed the entirety of her junior season after scoring 65 goals as a sophomore and 52 as a freshman. On top of that, Luther missed the 2020 campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic leaving her with no goals in eighth grade after she scored 31 as a seventh-grader.

Gowanda's Chloe Luther fires home her second goal of the game against Depew in Conference 4 girls lacrosse action at Hillis Field on Monday. OBSERVER Photo by Christian Storms

This year, the Division I-bound Jacksonville University commit, scored 51 goals in her first nine games and brought her total to 199 in her career ahead of Monday night’s Conference 4 matchup against Depew at Hillis Field.

Averaging nearly six goals a game and having scored five in the first meeting with the Wildcats, it was a question of when, not if, she would reach the 200-goal mark.

That answer came just 1:50 into the contest when Luther worked from her left to the right, cutting across the front of the net, before firing back over her shoulder to beat the Depew goalkeeper.

“I was very excited,” Luther said about reaching the 200-goal mark. “I missed so many of my shots in the beginning, I think it was just nerves. Then I got my goal and I was very excited. I think for my … 100th (I was) ecstatic, I jumped up everywhere, but this one was a little more calm.”

Luther’s goal gave the Panthers a 2-0 lead and they did not look back from there.

Chloe Luther eyes the Depew goalkeeper before scoring one of her five goals during Monday’s Conference 4 game at Hillis Field. Luther currently sits at 204 career goals. OBSERVER Photo by Christian Storms

“She’s been on varsity since seventh grade, so she’s been playing at this level her whole career,” Gowanda head coach Lottie Gill said. “She’s an incredibly hard-working player, I know she’s always out on the field, she is always out shooting around, she’s at home shooting around and even before today’s game she was outside playing catch with her dad. That shows, she just hit 200 career goals, that’s a lot of hard work.”

However, it wasn’t just Chloe Luther filling the back of the net as five girls had multiple goals as Gowanda dominated en route to a 25-4 victory.

That has been the norm this year for the Panthers who have scored double digits in all but one game this season and have won by more than five goals in all eight victories.

“Last year we had nine new players, they have a full year under their belt playing Conference 1 and 2,” Gill said about the improvement this season. “They got a taste of what Conference 3 or 4 could be like when they played Newfane in the quarterfinals and it was our one win we had. It’s building confidence, they’re playing against equal level talent this year, it’s knowing they can go to goal, they can catch the pass running through the pack, catching and finishing. I find that players once they find out they can score they just fall in love with it and just want to score more and more.”

Even with so many players on Gowanda sharing the spotlight in Monday’s landslide victory, it was evident Luther possesses talent well above everyone on the field.

“She’s definitely a talented player, you can see how she moves right to left, switching hands, she can score right handed, left handed, backhanded, whatever,” Gill added about Luther’s skill. “She’s also very athletic and driven. She just hustles all the time on the field offensively and defensively. If she’s playing defense she hustles to get the ball back and cause that turnover, offensively she’s looking to create plays or feed her teammates too. She is selfless with the ball and you can see the game gives back to her. … She’s a phenomenal player.”

Luther made all five of her goals looks effortless and she could have probably tripled that total if she wanted to. Instead of boosting her goal total, Luther looks to create for her teammates too and she does it well as she dealt three assists in the contest.

“The more confident we get these younger girls,” Gill said about developing the young talent and setting up teammates. “These other attackers, the other midfielders, even the defenders to carry the ball down the field and put the ball in the net, the deeper we’ll be as a team. Then the farther we can go in the postseason and hopefully win another sectional title. Our seniors understand that, Chloe understands that the more confidence we instill in our younger players the better off our team will be overall in the long run.”

After five goals and three assists Monday, Luther is second in Section VI with 56 goals and is third in assists with 28, but is the overall point leader with 84 in just 10 games.

What makes Luther’s season all that more impressive is that she is doing it just a year after a major knee injury that sidelined her for a season.

“Recovering in that amount of time, within a year, is a very hard thing to do, especially from a knee injury,” Luther said about her injury. “It just made me love my sport even more. Our competition we play isn’t the strongest (Conference 4), but I think it’s helping me return and get my confidence up.”

Luther put in the time and dedication to get back to being one of the very best in Section VI.

“It speaks to her hard work, her mental toughness, her resiliency,” Gill said about Luther’s comeback. “To sustain that kind of injury, she had it in March and she didn’t have surgery until June and then to come back and be cleared in February, that’s pretty phenomenal. But when you do the work, when you do the PT (physical therapy) and you put in the work in the gym and follow through with everything, that’s the ideal recovery time.”

That work ethic will help Luther when she plays at the next level in NCAA Division I at Jacksonville University.

“They’re getting a phenomenal athlete,” Gill said of the Dolphins. “She’s phenomenal on the field, but she’s really a good teammate. She is really good with the young girls, she is good with mentoring like being positive and cheering them on. That’s the ideal teammate, you want them to be talented on the field, but you also look at what they’re like as a person and she’s genuinely a good person. She’s positive, uplifting, always cheering for her teammates and that’s going to make her successful at the next level, they’re really getting a superstar down there in Jacksonville.”

Not only her talents, but her leadership is key for Gowanda and it’s making a big impact on the success of the team. Joining Luther on the scoresheet against Depew were Lily Scanlan scoring six goals with two assists; Karice John with five goals; Enette John with four assists; Ainsley Horth with a hat trick; Envy Cross, who scored twice; Cadence Luther, who had a goal and an assist; Layla Gamble, Zoe Bartlet and Cora Luther with a goal apiece; and Felicia Scanlan with an assist.

“Gowanda is the smallest school in Section VI girls lacrosse,” Gill said. “We were getting ready to field a jayvee program as well as varsity and modified in 2020, but the pandemic happened, everything shut down and kind of just took the wind out of sails. We have only since been able to field a varsity team, so last year we were able to kind of see the results of that. We had nine players last year that never played lacrosse before. You bring Chloe back with her senior leadership that she has naturally and it’s a good mix, the younger girls are learning a lot from her.”

Gowanda will look to finish through Conference 4 action with a perfect record before it begins its playoff run with a chance to return to Conference 1 or 2 through success in the Class D postseason.