RallyNorth.net

Wed, May 14, 2008 04:00 PM @ Gloucester

Team	Final
Hamilton-Wenham	13
Gloucester	7

Fishermen fade in fourth, fall to Generals

Thursday, May, 15 By Nick Curcuru
Correspondent

For three quarters, the Gloucester boys lacrosse team turned in a very competitive effort against Hamilton-Wenham.

But in the end, the Fishermen were done in by the fact that they were missing a number of starters for different reasons.

The Fishermen were able to push a tournament-bound Generals team to the brink, but the lack of numbers hurt them in the fourth quarter as they were unable to score en route to a 13-7 loss yesterday at Nate Ross Field.

"We ran out of gas," Gloucester head coach Drew Dominick said. "We didn't have the numbers today and we got tired in the end. But that doesn't take anything away from Hamilton-Wenham, they really pressured the ball and out-executed us."

On the other hand, Hamilton-Wenham head coach Jim LaSelva was impressed with the way his team bounced back from a bad 17-9 loss to Triton the day before.

"I was a little nervous at first, but we did a great job bouncing back from that loss," LaSelva said. "We have a good thing going this year, and it was big to put in a good game against a tough Gloucester team."

Leading 10-7 entering the fourth quarter, the Generals (10-6) put the game away with three unanswered goals. Charlie Pilkanis made it 11-7 midway through the quarter. Jake Cotter then added his fourth and fifth goals of the game late in the fourth to make it 13-7.

LaSelva said the win was a total team effort.

"Everybody contributed today," LaSelva said. "We got some great individual performances on offense and we played great team defense."

In a back-and-forth first half, Hamilton-Wenham jumped out to an early 1-0 lead when Ryan Gendron netted the first of his four goals. Gloucester (7-8) bounced back less than two minutes later on Nick White's goal.

Trailing 2-1 after the first, the Fishermen took an early lead in the second thanks to goals from Jeremy Fanning (three goals) and Adam Quinn (three goals), which were scored just four seconds apart. The Generals, however, would score four unanswered goals, two from Gendron and one from Cotter and Dave Littlefield to make it 6-3 with time running out in the first half.

Not to be outdone, the Fishermen put together another scoring flurry thanks to two more goals from Fanning with under a minute to go in the half to make it 6-5 Generals at halftime.

Like the first two quarters, the third was yet again a back and forth battle. Cotter scored a minute in to make it 7-5, only to be answered by Quinn just nine seconds later to cut the Generals lead to one. Hamilton-Wenham scored two more goals in the next two minutes from Cotter and Gendron respectively to make it a three-goal game early in the third. The two teams traded goals to end the third.

"It stinks that we ran out of gas because we played a pretty good game for the first three quarters," Dominick said. "But you can't expect to win playing short-handed."

At 7-8, the Fishermen are running out of room for error if they want to qualify the state tournament. Gloucester needs to win two of their remaining three games, starting Friday when they travel to Peabody, which beat the Fishermen 12-7 earlier in the season.

"It doesn't get much easier for us," Dominick said. "Hopefully we'll step it up starting tomorrow at practice and surprise some people against Peabody."