Things got bogged down in the middle of the game for Western Albemarle’s boys lacrosse team. Lucky for the Warriors, their start and finish were more than enough though as Western rolled to a 16-8 victory over Monticello in the Charlottesville Conference championship game.
“We weren’t executing as well as we had hoped to but I think we just need to get into the game and get into a groove, and that’s when we really started to execute,” said Western’s Carter Elliott.
Up just 8-7 in the third quarter, Western got the ball moving again down the stretch, pushing their lead back to 11-7 by the end of the third. Monticello couldn’t find an answer, having already clawed back from an early 7-2 deficit, and the Western onslaught carried over to the fourth quarter as the Warriors salted the game away.
“To start I don’t think we were moving the ball very well at all,” Reilly said. “In the second half we really picked it up.”
Elliott had a big hand in the offense, scoring 7 points on the day with a hat trick and four assists while Reilly was on point as a finisher, scoring five goals on the night. Reilly had three of those five in the fourth, with two coming off Elliott assists as the tandem helped Western close the door over the Mustangs.
John Carr Haden gave Western a nice push with two goals and two assists while Sumner Corbett and Clark Sipe each had a goal and an assist, A.J. Donovan scored twice while Nic Crissey and Taylor Godine had a goal each with Crissey scoring a particularly tough one with a defender hanging off him in the third quarter.
Jackson Sours posted eight saves in the cage for the Warriors while Elliott, Godine and Oliver Herndon each picked up four ground balls.
Monticello did a nice job of bouncing back out of that early five-goal hole, but they stumbled for the bulk of the second half, struggling to get good possessions while committing a host of unforced turnovers. They managed to gain a narrow 14-13 advantage on the faceoff, but holding onto the ball proved to be a problem while a host of penalties in key spots also made things tough on the Mustangs.
“The refs told me at the beginning of the game we’ve got to keep our sticks down and my team just struggled with that tonight,” said Monticello coach Tucker Tapscott. “We let the penalties add up. You’ll never beat a quality squad from the penalty box. You can’t give shooters the opportunity to have open lanes.”
Derrick Walker and Keenan Haan each posted hat tricks. Haan scored all three of his goals consecutively during the first half run that got the Mustangs back in the mix.
Both teams advance to the Region 4A South tournament with the Mustangs playing in the quarterfinals later this week against E.C. Glass while Western gets a bye into the semifinals where they’ll face the winner of Salem and Hanover later this week.
