Boys Lax falls to Wootton in second round of playoffs

MAY 14, WOOTTON—

Around 11:00 p.m. on Monday May 8 the county brackets for the 2005 boys lacrosse playoff campaign were drawn up. Blair's first match-up: Einstein,a team they had barely put away in the regular season 4-3 who they looked to have a solid victory over to help them advance to the second round of playoffs. The Blazers put away the Titans 9-1 and went on to play the highly seeded Patriots of Wootton, who quickly ended Blair's playoff run in a 17-1 smashing.

The Blazers lost their game to Wootton because of shoddy defense. The defense had trouble keeping up with cutters and often lost whom they were guarding, giving the Patriots a lot of open looks right in front of the goal. According to senior co-captain Justin Hoy, without the solid goaltending of senior co-captain Andrew Helgeson, the Blazers would have been in the hole by a much larger margin. "We left Helgeson out to dry a lot," he said, adding, "And he still came up with a fair amount of big saves." The absence of senior starter Nathan Barrymore also hurt the defensive block.

The loss to Wootton put the Blazers final season record at 5-11, including two games played in a tournament over Spring break. While the record is slightly disappointing, according to head coach Robert Gibb; "[The team] won the games we should have won," including their first match-up against Einstein.

The Blazers played the Titans at home, being the higher-seeded team, and quickly proved why they were better. The Blair offense put in nine goals before Einstein got in its one and only goal of the game. The 9-1 victory proved a far stretch from their barely-there 4-3 victory over Einstein on April 6. According to Hoy the Blair offense stepped it up in the May 12 playoff game. "Last time we played Einstein we dominated [the game] but had trouble finishing. This time we didn't. We put the game away," he said.

Senior Chris Stavish and junior Tyler Wilchek each had two goals for the Blazers, and senior co-captain Justin Hoy put in one. However, Blair's big gun came in senior co-captain and lead scorer Andrew Beach. After being out at the end of the regular season with a concussion, Beach came back for playoffs and put up four goals against Einstein and Blair's one goal against Wootton, ending his season on a high note.

As Gibb put it in his summation of the season, "Looking back I think we accomplished as much as we could have hoped for [this season]," adding that he believes a few players have the potential to get divisional honors. Now as the team prepares for their traditional post-season festivities, with the final buzzer of the season having long gone off, Gibb is already looking towards next season. "We had more freshman and sophomores getting playing time this year than any other year, " said Gibb. "And that bodes well for the future."