While their classmates on the women’s lacrosse team had to endure a brief spell of inclement weather during the early stages of their contest, the St. Mary’s College of Maryland men’s lacrosse team faced visiting Messiah under ideal conditions Saturday evening and weathered an early proverbial storm for a 19-15 victory.
St. Mary’s College (6-2) had actually led on only a few, spotty occasions during the first half and faced a 9-7 deficit at the intermission and still trailed 14-12 at the end of the third quarter, one in which the Falcons led 13-8 at one point. After yielding the first goal of the fourth quarter, St. Mary’s College embarked on an improbable run as the Seahawks scored the game’s final seven goals over the last 10 minutes.
“I think early on the guys were a little bit of a hurry to try and score on plays and they were being impatient,” St. Mary’s College coach Jason Childs said. “When they started being patient and running the offense and looking for good shots, we had a lot of good looks and that’s when we started scoring in bunches. It took us a while, but they overcame the adversity and learned from it.”
After the Seahawks had trimmed the gap to 13-12 late in the third quarter, the Falcons got a late goal from Mike McKnelly then Bobby Berg opened the fourth quarter scoring for the visitors.
The Seahawks then reversed the course of the contest on the game’s most unlikely goal when Keegan Preis intercepted a Messiah pass and then scored an uncontested, empty net goal.
“I think that goal was the turning point,” Preis said. “Once I scored that just really gave all of the rest of our guys a lift. From that point on, we really just started clicking offensively.”
Just over a minute later Johnny McGrain scored an unassisted goal to bring the Seahawks within one and from that point on the momentum never shifted away from the hosts. Joshua Martel tied it at 15-all with 8:01 remaining then McGrain gave the Seahawks the lead for good less than a minute later. Jake Levey and Ethan Little added unassisted goals about two minutes apart then Martel punctuated the comeback with the final tally in the last minute.
“Once we got the momentum and started scoring, our bench was into it and our fans were into it,” McGrain said. “We just keep feeding off the energy in the stadium and on the bench. It was a great win for us. We’ll celebrate this for the next 24 hours then we’ll go back to work on Monday.”
St. Mary’s College men’s team will return to action this Saturday, March 30, against fifth-ranked Dickinson College. The team will return home for games against Cairn on April 3 and Bryn Athyn on April 6, venture to Penn College on April 13 then the Seahawks will host top-ranked Salisbury University on April 16 in their annual Gold Rush game.
Most Popular
Comments / 0