In desperate need of a bounce back after losing to Western Albemarle Saturday night and staring down the final two weeks of the 2014 campaign, Covenant’s boys lacrosse team was at a crossroads.
“We took all the stats and pulled them together — ground balls, penalties, unforced errors, assist-to-turnover ratio which was zero against Western,” said Covenant coach Mike Gardiner. “We had a ton of penalties against Western and we were negative four in ground balls. So I put those up (on the white board) for the season and against Western with a big question mark. What are we going to do?”
The Eagles gave him a pretty resounding answer Wednesday afternoon, blowing past VIC opponent North Cross 16-6 to advance to the conference title game.
In a battle between the two top-ranked squads in VISAA’s Division 2 poll, No. 1 Covenant looked in control throughout. The game was tied at 3-3 when the Eagles took full advantage of an illegal stick ruling against the Raiders midway through the second quarter. By halftime, Covenant was up 9-3 and North Cross didn’t manage a significant comeback, struggling to find a rhythm as Covenant dominated possession of the ball.
Drew Gaffney put in some serious work with an explosive five-goal, one-assist effort. Clark Gathright went for two goals and two assists while Jay Gaffney and Win Marks each finished with two goals.
Trenton Jenkins, Brandon DeJong, Sencer Godine, Michael Colberg and Savraj Moore each had goals to round out the Covenant scoring. DeJong also chipped in assist.
Austin Hall came up with six saves in the cage for the Eagles.
Covenant will get a chance to avenge one of its handful of losses on the year Friday when the Eagles take on Blue Ridge in the VIC championship game.
