July 29, 2011
Return to glory for Mass. high school champs
by Susan N. Biddle/
Duxbury players celebrate their 16-9 victory over St. John's Prep for the Division 1 title in a rematch of last year's classic championship match. (photo: Mark Brodie/New England Lacrosse Journal)
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Everything old was new again in Massachusetts lacrosse in 2011, as the old champs who lost their crowns a year ago reclaimed them in blowout fashion.
Duxbury and Westwood — the marquee boys’ and girls’ programs in the state — were able to return to their past glories in Division 1, while Medfield continued its stranglehold on the boys’ Div. 2 state title, and first-time champs emerged from the girls’ Div. 2 and boys’ Div. 3 tournaments.
The boys’ Div. 1 game produced the rematch everyone wanted, with a wildly different outcome. In 2010, St. John’s Prep snapped Duxbury’s run of six consecutive state titles with a thrilling, come-from-behind, last-second game-tying goal leading to a 13-12 overtime win. The game was selected No. 7 in New England Lacrosse Journal’s list of the greatest games ever played in New England, the only high school game on the list.
A rematch was not necessarily expected, however, as St. John’s Prep finished the regular season 10-7 and entered the tournament seeded 10th. Duxbury, meanwhile, entered the tournament as the third seed with a 15-2 record — slightly misleading because the Dragons’ losses all came to teams from outside of the Bay State.
But when top-seeded Marshfield (20-0 in the regular season) lost in the first round to 17th-seeded Lincoln-Sudbury, St. John’s Prep became the favorite to escape its quarter of the bracket, and a 10-9 win over Needham put Prep back at Harvard Stadium for the final.
Duxbury, meanwhile, shut out Natick, thumped Lexington, 13-4, and then blew out second-seeded Billerica, 19-9, to earn its spot in the final.
While fans came to the game expecting another thriller, that was not in the cards as Duxbury raced out to a 7-2 lead after one quarter.
Although the Eagles closed the gap to 8-5 at the half, a big third quarter broke the game open and Duxbury cruised to a 16-9 win and its eighth title in the past 10 years.
Duxbury attackman and All-American Kane Haffey led all scorers with six goals, with Bryan Barry adding four of his own. The Eagles’ Jimmy O’Connell scored five in the losing effort.
In girls’ Div. 1, the state final set up to be a redemption game as Westwood — state champ in 2008 and ’09 before being knocked off by Framingham in the Eastern Mass. final in 2010 — squared off with Western Mass. champ Longmeadow, a team that had lost the last seven title games.
The two teams had played to a tie — the lone blemish on Westwood’s season — during the regular season, but Longmeadow had struggled by its standards out west, losing twice to Minnechaug during the regular season. After beating Minnechaug in the Western Mass. final, the Lancers knocked off Central Mass. champ Westboro for the right to play for the trophy.
Westwood had come though the Division 1 South bracket, which appeared to be setting up a mother-daughter battle between Westwood’s Leslie Frank and her daughter Meredith’s Notre Dame Academy team until NDA was knocked off in the semifinals by Needham, 8-6. Beth O’Brien’s Rockets could not take down both Franks, however, as Westwood took the South final, 14-8.
Defending state champion Framingham suffered through a rough season and was knocked out of the Div. 1 North tournament with a quarterfinal loss to Concord-Carlisle. C-C was no match for Lincoln-Sudbury in the semis, and the Warriors pulled a mild upset when they knocked off top-seeded Andover to win its first North crown.
But just as Longmeadow’s playoff experience helped it win out West, Westwood’s playoff veterans gave it the edge over Lincoln-Sudbury, and the Wolverines cruised into the state finalwith a 15-7 win.
The final game, however, was not even a close approximation of the midseason tie, as Westwood rolled to a 7-3 halftime lead and cruised to a 15-9 win. The Wolverines have played six state finals against the Lancers and won five (2003, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011), with Longmeadow’s lone crown in that time coming against Westwood in 2004.
Westwood junior Laura McHoul scored six goals and two assists, while Johns Hopkins-bound senior Sarah Biron added four goals and an assist to outscore Longmeadow by themselves.
In boys’ Div. 2 action, defending champion Medfield entered the tournament seeded ninth after an 11-7 regular season. That meant a first-round matchup with 2009 champ Walpole and, after a one-goal win, an Eastern Mass. quarterfinal game against top-seeded Wellesley, which had defeated Medfield, 8-5, en route to an undefeated regular season.
This time, however, it was the Warriors whose playoff experience showed in a 7-5 win. Having slayed the division’s top team, Medfield rolled past Foxboro, took the Eastern Mass. final, 11-5, over Concord-Carlisle and then knocked off Central Mass. champ Algonquin — a 9-8 overtime winner over Western Mass. champ Longmeadow in the semis — by a final score of 13-9 to win the crown. The championship game was 9-8 heading into the final quarter when the skies — and Medfield’s offense — both opened up. Junior Connor Roddy led the Warriors with three goals, including two just 82 seconds apart during the decisive run.
In girls’ Div. 2 action, long-time bridesmaid Hopkinton finally got its chance to hold the flowers and be the center of attention as it knocked off perennial contender Duxbury, 13-12, to win the Div. 2 South crown, and then took a run-and-gun, 18-15 decision over Div. 2 North champ Winchester in the final.
Two-time defending champ Norwell entered the tournament as the ninth seed in the South and knocked off top-seeded Medfield, 9-8, only to drop a 13-12 decision to rival Duxbury in the semifinals, the same score Duxbury would end its season with in the loss to Hopkinton just days later. Winchester, meanwhile, rolled past Manchester-Essex, Triton and second-seed Weston to earn a Div. 2 North final bid against top-seeded Ipswich, and rolled in the Div. 2 title game by a final of 16-6.
Hopkinton, which prior to this year had lost four consecutive Div. 2 finals, had to play the title game without three injured players, which made coach Jodi Dolan’s job easy, as she did not make a single substitution for the entire game. Sophomore Tess Chandler scored seven goals, while senior Brooke Rudden added four more.
Winchester, which had received only three yellow cards during the entire regular season, earned three during the final game, which helped Hopkinton control the tempo and stall the game to capture the trophy.
In boys’ Div. 3 action — the girls in Massachusetts play in only two divisions, but the boys have three — Weston won its first title the old-fashioned way, by going through the best teams to capture the crown. In the semifinals, Weston knocked off defending champion Cohasset, 12-10, leading to a final against Dover-Sherborn, the tournament’s top seed.
Any championship-game jitters dissipated quickly, as Widcat Robert Crockett won the opening faceoff and dished it to junior Joey Pasquale, who fed Kyle Nickerson for a score just six seconds into the game. That was the only score of the first quarter, but Pasquale’s two goals stretched the Weston lead to 3-1 at the half. The two teams traded third-quarter goals — with Pasquale again scoring for Weston — and the junior’s fourth goal of the game gave the Wildcats a 5-3 lead that stood up against a furious Dover-Sherborn onslaught that included a score in the game’s waning seconds.
This article originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of New England Lacrosse Journal.
Susan N. Biddle can be reached at feedback@laxjournal.com
