Lancers dethrone Tigers in lacrosse final
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AMHERST - The South Hadley and Longmeadow boys lacrosse teams Friday played a rematch of their 2009 Western Massachusetts Division 2 championship game, with a few notable changes.
Again, the squads met on Garber Field at the University of Massachusetts, but this time, the Tigers were the No. 1 seed who had defeated the Lancers twice during the regular season.
And this time, it was No. 3 Longmeadow which pulled the upset, defeating South Hadley 9-5 to advance to the state tournament.
"Once you get (to the western Mass. championship), it's always a different game. We came in here and we did the same thing to them last year," said Tigers coach Matt Benoit.
South Hadley defeated the Lancers 7-6 in overtime to win the title in 2009. "We dethroned them in overtime, and they just did it to us. Payback."
Midway through the second period, the Tigers (19-2) and Longmeadow (16-6) were tied 3-3 when the Lancers pulled ahead on two goals by Jake Heger.
With 6 minutes, 30 seconds left in the half, Heger drove through the Tigers' defense and hit a diagonal shot to the right past goalie Sean Mackey.
Two minutes later, Heger scored again, this time on a rebound after Mackey saved a shot by Kyle Barsalou, giving Longmeadow a 5-3 lead at halftime.
The Lancers continued the momentum in the third with a goal by Dylan Kelleher.
South Hadley started to get some of its scoring punch back a little more than a minute into the fourth quarter, when Luke Dilisio knocked in a feed from Zac Guenther to make the score 6-4.
Kelleher responded for Longmeadow by finishing a pass from Heger with 8:14 left, but the Tigers kept coming, with Chris Menard redirecting a pass from Ryan Dickinson past Lancers goalie Dave Walen (nine saves) to again cut the lead to two at 7-5.
However, in the game's final minutes, Kelleher, who finished with a game-high four goals, scored twice more to ensure the victory.
"During the regular season, we had played them pretty evenly," said Longmeadow coach John Rauseo. "We had lost both games in the fourth quarter, so our model tonight was finish. We did that."
Said Benoit, "Our key all year was to score 10 goals and hold them to less than 10 goals. We didn't score, so our game plan didn't work."
The teams played to a 2-2 tie in the first quarter, with Longmeadow drawing first blood on a shot by Joey Volk. Dickinson answered for South Hadley, and Dilisio gave the Tigers their only lead of the game when he capitalized on a pass by Ben Menard.
With less than a minute remaining in the quarter, Kelleher tied the game for Longmeadow.
The Lancers got another goal from Volk, and Ben Menard scored for South Hadley before Heger started his rally midway through the second.
Mackey had a strong performance in goal, finishing with nine saves, including six in the second quarter.
"He's a gamer and he always plays. I never question whether Sean's going to give me 100 percent down there, and he did that today," Benoit said of his senior captain. "He made the saves he could, and we just let up too many (opportunities) in the first half."
Dilisio (two goals), Ben Menard (goal, assist), Dickinson (goal, assist), Chris Menard (goal) and Guenther (two assists) led the Tigers.
Longmeadow got big games from Volk and Heger (both with two goals and two assists) in addition to Kelleher.
It was the final high school game for South Hadley seniors Mackey, Jack Sullivan, Alex Ortensi, Joe Kelly, Max Hebert, Andrew Larrier and Nate Standen.
