Boys’ lacrosse dominates NA

By Dan DeBlasio

The Canton High School boys’ lacrosse team got back to its winning ways this week by rolling over North Attleboro High School 14-2.

The Bulldogs knew coming into the match that this was their best chance to halt their losing skid, having already beaten North Attleboro earlier in the season. That game, however, was a one-goal, overtime thriller — this one, a lopsided blowout.

“We beat them earlier this year in overtime and we played the rematch without three starters from the first game so we were expecting an absolute dogfight,” coach Bill Bendell said.

The dogfight, however, never materialized. Instead, the game was all but over by halftime, with Canton tallying ten goals in the first two frames. The Bulldog attack was constant and ferocious, with Canton constantly knocking on the NA door and taking advantage of the Red Rocketeers’ every mistake.

“I was not surprised that we won the game,” Bendell said. “I was surprised at the way we were able to totally dominate it, though.”

Ryan Conrad did not lose a single face off and Andrew Reardon, Matt Draper and Kurt Leavitt all won the majority of their face offs as well. 
Freshman Matt Lennon scored his first career varsity goal and also added an assist. Joe Compagna and Matt Malloy led the way with three and four goals respectively, while seven other players, including freshmen JC Marcone, Leavitt, and Nick O’Connor, contributed at least one point each.
On the defensive end goalie Pat Ward had a strong outing between the pipes and got help from the backline of Brandon Goodwin, who led the defense, David Mansfield and Chris Haidul.

Canton took on Sharon later in the week and although the ’Dogs put forth the same great effort as they did against NA, they did not find the same result. Canton dropped the overtime match 8-7.

The game was a constant back-and-forth struggle with six lead changes in regulation. Jimmy Paschal scored two clutch goals, including one in the waning minutes of regulation to send it into overtime. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, Sharon found the back of the net and put away the game early into overtime.

“We were right there the whole game,” Bendell said. “It came down to a couple of bounces here and there, but we really played great in this one.”

TJ Lennon led the team by picking up seven groundballs. Max Kamin scored twice while Bobby Hayhurst, Malloy, and Reardon each added a goal. “I’m hoping that we can take what we did this week and build on it,” Bendell said. “We played some real good lacrosse and if we can keep this going we can do some damage.”

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Posted by Canton Citizen on May 13 2010. Filed under High School, Sports. Both comments and pings are currently closed.