LYNN– For the St. Mary’s boys lacrosse team, Monday’s Division 3 North state tournament game was years in the making. It was the program’s first-ever postseason home game and it was only fitting that No. 8 St. Mary’s came away with a 16-13 first-round win over No. 9 Essex Tech at Manning Field.
“It’s great for the school,” Spartans coach Josh Field said. “It’s great for these kids. It’s great for the kids that played in this program 15 years ago. This program has been around for a long time and we’re not here if we didn’t have those kids 15 years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago. This is something the program can take home. I’m really proud of the school, the kids and the whole St. Mary’s community.”
Offensively, St. Mary’s stuck with what the Spartans do best-sharing the ball. Davis Kinne led the charge with four goals. Jaiden Moriello and Brendan Laundry scored three goals apiece. Zach Barden scored two goals. Connor Butt, Damon Maribito, Joe O’Keefe and Nick Napolitano scored one goal each. Moriello dished three assists.
“We know that if we want to be a successful team we have to share the ball,” Field said. “We have to initiate and we have to move it. If we can do that, we can be successful on offense. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into that one-man game and that’s not what we want to do. It was a good night to move the ball, distribute the ball and the result was we scored more goals.”
Essex Tech sprinted out to a 2-0 lead in the first quarter before Kinne got the Spartans back on track with their first goal of the night. Moriello followed with the next two tallies and it was 3-3 at the end of the period.
The Spartans turned things up a notch through the next six minutes. A goal each from Laundry, Moriello, Butt, Napolitano and Barden turned a tied game into an 8-3 Spartans lead. Essex Tech answered with the next two but the Spartans closed the half with goals from Kinne and Laundry. St. Mary’s led 10-5 at recess.
“We had a chance to settle it down a little bit (in the second quarter),” Field said. “We gave up a few early goals. I think we realized that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. We controlled the ball a little bit, we were able to settle down a little and we kind of back to our ways defensively. When we did that, it gave us some more offensive chances.”
The Spartans never trailed from there. After the Hawks scored the first goal of the second half, Kinne fired in two to push St. Mary’s lead to 12-6. Maribito and Barden followed with one apiece, giving St. Mary’s a 14-10 edge at the end of the third.
Essex Tech trimmed St. Mary’s lead to three with the first score of the fourth quarter and the final goal of the game, but the latter came with just 40.4 seconds- too little, too late.
St. Mary’s (15-4) advances to Thursday’s (5) sectional quarterfinal at No. 1 Pentucket. The Spartans fell to Pentucket 15-7 during the regular season.
“If we can limit our mistakes, it’s one of those games where we need to be sharp on the clears,” Field said. “Just little fundamental stuff that makes all the difference in a one or two-goal game. We have to be sharp. That’s going to be our goal going up against (Pentucket).
“We know we’re a team that can continue to improve,” Field said. “There’s a lot we can improve on. We have two good days of practice ahead of us right now. That’ll allow us to tighten up a few things. If we can limit our mistakes against Pentucket, that’ll give us a good chance at moving on.”
