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Brentsville boys lax tops Potomac Falls
What seemed like a blowout by the Brentsville District boys’ lacrosse team turned into a near collapse as the Tigers had to fight back from an 8-6 deficit in the third quarter Monday to pull out an 11-9 victory over Potomac Falls.
“We have a very young team,” Brentsville coach Chris Anderson said after the night game in Nokesville. “They are prone to swings. They play great; they play terrible.”
Senior veterans started Brentsville off on a hot streak as Sebastian Hernandez, Winston Place and Tyler Blaser combined for a hat trick in the first quarter.
Senior midfielder Luke Hatcher extended the lead to 4-0 less than two minutes into the second quarter and, for a moment, Brentsville appeared to have the game locked on cruise control.
“Luke just always hustles,” commented the coach. “Luke’s mentality is that it doesn’t matter how big the other guy is, he’s going to run through him.”
Trailing by four, the Panthers finally woke up and hit their first goal of the night on the first of Mason Hodges’s two successful attacks against freshman goal tender Austin Messich. Casey Erickson followed up for Potomac Falls less than a minute and a half later and, when Josh Solomon drilled another attack past Messich with 6:56 to go in the second quarter, the match became a game again.
“They were gassed,” Anderson said of his team’s second quarter performance. “I noticed that our defense wasn’t responding to their slides very well. They were just sluggish.”
Solomon’s second goal of the night forced the Tigers into panic mode as Potomac Falls had just scored four unanswered points to tie the game.
Hernandez responded for the orange-and-white by flinging the ball to junior attacker Brian O’Mara, left open in front of the Potomac Falls net, who bounced it off the ground and into the net.
“Brian’s the best passer and scorer on the team,” noted Anderson.
And though Brentsville seemed to have regained momentum by putting an end to the Panther run and having a 5-4 halftime lead, Anthony Baracat even things back up again 31 seconds into the third quarter. At the time, Potomac Falls had a one-man advantage because of a penalty against Brentsville near the end of the first half.
That penalty was “the thing that killed us,” Anderson said.
The Panthers took their first lead of the game with 5:54 on the clock in the third quarter and eventually extended it to an 8-6 advantage when Place found himself right in front of the Potomac Falls goal for a perfect shot with less than a minute remaining in the third quarter.
Brentsville wasted little time in the high-intensity fourth quarter as O’Mara ran around the back of the Potomac Falls net, came out from the left side and served up a wallop of a hit that brought the game back to an even 8-8 score.
With 7:49 remaining in the fourth quarter and the game tied at 9-9, freshman Garrison Ernst dished off an assist to Blaser from the Panther defense’s right side. Sophomore midfielder Ty Robb sealed the deal five minutes later as he picked up a ground ball, twirled and passed it to an open Place, who buried his final shot to give Brentsville an 11-9 advantage it this time would not relinquish.
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