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Greenwich Boys Lax Loses Heartbreaker to Jesuits, 11-10

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Greenwich High School's Jack O'Connor gets the ball past the Fairfield Prep defense during Saturday's CIAC class L game. (Avery Belicka photo)
Greenwich High School’s Jack O’Connor gets the ball past the Fairfield Prep defense during Saturday’s CIAC class L game. (Avery Belicka photo)

For both Greenwich High School and Fairfield Prep, the road to the CIAC class L boys lacrosse championship sees these two schools battle each other.

These two schools have met up all but one year since 2010. A few state tourney match-ups were convincing wins and many were close battles. However Saturday’s class L quarterfinal 11-10 defeat was the most heartbreaking loss for the Cardinals to date in this series with Prep.

“It was a good game against two very good team,” Greenwich High head coach Bob Lutz said. “It went back-and-forth the entire game and it kind of felt like whoever was going to get the last goal was going to have the opportunity to win. It’s tough how we lost today. Someone had to win and someone had to lose. It’s frustrating, but it was a good game.”

With only 1:49 in the contest, Greenwich stormed back and took the lead when junior Addison Muir took the pass from Michael Sands and hit the corner of the net for the 10-9 lead. Bailey Savio, who won 18 of the 20 faceoffs he grabbed on the day, won the draw and GHS immediately called timeout.

During the timeout, the Big Red was notified that they were getting charged with a stick violation. The pocket of the lacrosse stick where the ball rests was too deep and Greenwich was forced to go man-down for one minutes on the unreleasable penalty.

“On a hot and humid day, it happens,” Lutz said. “The stick bags out a little bit. One of my assistants coaches looked at the stick and said that he didn’t think it was illegal. But the refs are trained to pick them out, so it must have been illegal. And that’s sad that the boys have to lose like that. It’s sad that he thinks that his fault, and it’s not his fault. It could have gone either way.”

Greenwich's Bennett Cooper makes the save on the ball during the CIAC class L quarterfinal game against the Jesuits. (Avery Belicka photo)
Greenwich’s Bennett Cooper makes the save on the ball during the CIAC class L quarterfinal game against the Jesuits. (Avery Belicka photo)

That’s when Fairfield Prep capitalized and scored two goals in less than 30 seconds to seal the victory. Mitchell Savoca scored the game-winning goal with 54.6 seconds left in regulation to help the Jesuits move on to the CIAC class L semis, where they will battle Simsbury for the right to play on championship Saturday. 

“Losing on a couple of man-down goals is frustrating but I thought our defense played really well today,” Lutz added. “But Prep is a good team and we lost to a really good team. It’s one of those things that you have to accept.”

Will Perry led the way for the Cardinals, netting three goals and one assist, while Matt Baugher also pitched in with the hat trick. Sands finished with a goal and three assists, while Muir, Sean Doherty and Scooter Harrington each grabbed one goal.

“I felt like we had the one-goal lead towards the end and  we were already planning how to kill the clock in order to get the victory,” Lutz said. And then that happens and it sent us in a different direction.”

In net, Bennett Cooper made four saves for Greenwich.

“We knew they were going to have a game plan defensively that goes around Perry, whether they were shutting him off or with match-ups,” Lutz said. “So we had a couple of different things that we put in and it worked. All the guys stepped up and played a supporting role.”

With the scored knotted at 5-5 in the third quarter, Doherty’s shot gave Big Red the 6-5 advantage with 7:22 left. The lead didn’t last long, as Prep and GHS entered the fourth all tied at 6-6.

Although Greenwich held the 8-7 lead with 8:43 to play, Prep came back, scoring twice to grab the 9-8 advantage with 5:31 showing on the clock.

That’s when Baugher came up huge and blasted a missile past Prep goalie John O’Connor to tie the game. Also not to be denied was Muir, who took that pass from Sands and found the back of the net to give Greenwich the 10-9 lead.

With the loss, Greenwich ended the season with a 11-8 record.

“I am really proud of the way the boys played this season,” Lutz said. “For my first year, I couldn’t have asked for a better team. I was hoping to end it differently and I thought we had the talent to go further.”

To read much more on the team and how Lutz thought his first year with Big Red went, check out the Greenwich Sentinel sports section, in print Friday.

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