H-town lacrosse run ends

Boys fall in semifinals

Friday, May 16, 2008

Just like the previous two meetings, Leonardtown (15-1) walked away with a win. But unlike the previous two affairs, the Raiders blew out Huntingtown (12-4), 15-4, to move on to the regional championship game.

‘‘I think Bart Rogers, one of our coaches, said it best – he had a picture in his mind of what it’s supposed to look like and tonight was it,” said Leonardtown head coach Matt Chew. ‘‘Offense, defense, special teams – after the first five minutes of the game, six minutes of the game, it just started clicking.”

Fourth-seeded Huntingtown controlled the first quarter of the match, leading the top-seeded Raiders for much of the first 12 minutes of the game.

The Hurricanes got on the board first with a goal by Culver Bradbury with 9 minutes 56 seconds left in the quarter. After Leonardtown’s Stephen Norris tied the match at 1 with 8:12 left, Bradbury again pushed the Hurricanes ahead with a goal at 4:49. After a David Rice goal put the Hurricanes up 3-1 only one minute later, Huntingtown took its biggest lead of the game and looked like it was ready to pull the upset.

‘‘I don’t think we played bad,” said Bradbury, who said Huntingtown’s inability to get groundballs and Leonardtown’s depth were the keys to the Hurricane loss. ‘‘I think they wanted it more than us. They have a lot more players than us.”

Leonardtown began to look like its old self in the final 30 seconds. With 14 seconds left, Norris scored his second goal of the match and, nine seconds later, Kenny Aicher scored his first to end the first quarter in a tie at 3.

‘‘I only have one thing to say – we tried our hardest,” said Huntingtown head coach Rodger Ganley.

The second quarter was all Leonardtown, as it began to slowly dominate the Hurricanes.

The Raiders scored five goals in the second and, more importantly, held the Hurricanes scoreless.

After the game, Chew made a point to mention the performance of goalie Mitchell Kanowicz, who finished the first half with 11 saves, 18 for the game.

‘‘The defense all around, the six on the field plus him did a fantastic job,” said Chew. ‘‘That’s been something we’ve been struggling with this year ... He’s hitting his stride right at the right time of the year. Going into the playoffs, he’s playing his best lacrosse of the year.”

The second half followed the pattern of the second quarter, as the Raiders outscored Huntingtown 7-1 in the third and fourth quarters. The Raiders were carried by the usual duo of Aicher and Brian Dallaire as one of the two assisted or scored on nine of Leonardtown’s 15 goals and six of seven in the second half.

‘‘We’ve got people stepping up that have been struggling all season,” said Dallaire. ‘‘That’s really good. We’re starting to really jell.”

Aicher and Dallaire added another wrinkle to their partnership Tuesday, in the form of Norris.

The senior assisted Aicher or Dallaire five times throughout the game, while scoring three goals of his own.

‘‘I like to think that we are a team that can roll with the punches,” said Norris. ‘‘We can’t go out there and practice every day, but we have chemistry that we built off the field.”

While the Raiders have typically followed a pattern of strong first quarters, then tapering off throughout the rest of the game, Leonardtown experienced the opposite affect on Tuesday, starting slow and then building up in the second quarter.

And while the weekend’s rain had little to no effect on the playing surface, the Raiders said the lack of a weekend practice affected their ability to find a rhythm in the first quarter.

‘‘I think it’s a credit to Huntingtown,” said Chew. ‘‘They came out pumped, they came out believing with all their hearts. They outhustled us for the first part of the first quarter and it wasn’t until the last 30 seconds...that we ended up typing it up.”