Stories

STAB boys fall short in final

NORFOLK — St. Anne’s-Belfield seniors Owen Van Arsdale and Austin Geisler embraced on the sideline after Saturday’s game, two frustrated, exhausted pillars of one of the STAB lacrosse program’s greatest classes — a class that didn’t get its storybook ending.

“I reminded the guys there in the huddle this is such an incredible group of seniors, they’ve done so much for our program (including) two state championships,” said STAB coach Bo Perriello. “Just came up a little short today.”

The Saints fell 11-6 to St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in the VISAA Division I final, leaving STAB one win short of a three-peat as the state champions.

“The two biggest things we talked about that we weren’t able to do today were controlling the faceoff x, which we’ve been able to do, and staying out of the penalty box,” Perriello said. “Those two things really just kept us from being able to make our run.”

St. Stephen’s held a huge 16-4 advantage on the faceoff, dominating after an early run of wins by St. Anne’s. Brent Armstrong was solid as the point man on the face while long stick midfielder Matt Dyson seemed to pick up every ground ball coming off the wing.

“He’s played close defense for us the last couple of years,” said SSSA coach Andy Taibl. “He broke his wrist and had to get surgery in the offseason, so he didn’t come back until the end of March. We felt like the defense we put in while he was out was doing a nice job, so we asked him to run some long pole for us and he’s done a great job.”

That advantage on the faceoff led to a number of key goals, including a critical one during SSSA’s decisive run that started late in the third and carried deep into the fourth. Senior attackman Peter Labovich scored a goal with 2:11 left in the third to put St. Stephen’s up 6-5. He followed that with a goal early in the fourth, and Armstrong scored 10 seconds later off the ensuing faceoff, giving SSSA a three-goal lead.

“Brent was our No. 1 faceoff guy from the start of the season,” Taibl said. “Unfortunately, midway through April, he hurt his hip a little bit and facing off was something that we just had to take out of the equation for a little while. He’s still a little dinged up but I think he just felt like, this week, you’ve just got to find a way to do it and I was proud of that working out for him today.”

St.Stephen’s David Murray finished off the four-goal run that spanned 8 minutes and 16 seconds. Penalties didn’t help STAB during that stretch, consistently cropping up at inopportune times, be it an ill-advised slash or a delay of game.

“Over the course of the game it was something like 10-to-2 on penalties and it’s tough to stay in the game when you’re spending so much time in the penalty box,” Perriello said.

Labovich finished with five goals to lead SSSA while Armstrong, just a sophomore scored three goals and had a pair of assists. STAB’s Charles Schreck handled the majority of the duties against the electric SSSA junior David Solomon, and held him to just one assist on the day, but SSSA found other ways to get it done, including two goals from Muray and Labovich’s explosive outing.

STAB got two goals each from Andrew Crockett and Hobey Jiranek, while Chapin Speidel had a goal and an assist. Austin Geisler, STAB’s senior keeper, had 12 saves. STAB jumped out to a 2-0 lead to start the game, but a quick flurry from SSSA gave St. Stephen’s a 4-3 halftime lead.

While STAB was left with anguish at the end of the contest, St. Stephen’s celebrated the end of their title drought.

“All the seniors, they’ve never won a state championship,” Armstrong said. “We felt like we had to do it for them. It’s just time.”

Comments

comments