By Dave Stewart
MaxPreps.com
NORWALK, Conn. – The 2008 FCIAC lacrosse season has been anything but predictable, so why would anyone have expected the playoffs to be any different?
Two teams that few would have given a shot at the league championships reached the Promised Land last week when the New Canaan girls and Ridgefield boys each knocked off defending champions in the conference semifinals.
New Canaan rallied from a four-goal halftime deficit to upset top-seeded Darien, 15-14, last Thursday at Dunning Field. The championship game berth is the Rams’ first since 2004 and just the second in the last decade.
Ridgefield, meanwhile, had never reached the FCIAC boys’ lacrosse final until this season, when they scored a dramatic 9-8 win against Greenwich in the semis last Friday at Brien McMahon.
Number 4 New Canaan (15-3) will face No. 3 Wilton (14-2-1) in the girls’ championship game Tuesday at 5:15 p.m., with the boys' game, pitting No. 3 Ridgefield (15-2) against No. 1 Darien (17-1), to follow at approximately 7:30 p.m. Both games will be held at McMahon.
Tigers Tame Greenwich on White’s Last-Second Goal
Ridgefield wasn't on anybody’s radar when the season began, but the Tigers bulldozed their way to the top of the league under coach Andy Stockfish, a former state champ at Wilton.
“In the beginning of the year, we weren’t even on any of the polls,” senior goalie Brad DePrima said. “No one even gave us a second look. But I think we’ve proven we can play and we can be the talk in the upper tier of Connecticut.”
That much wasn’t in doubt during last Friday’s semifinals, but even though Ridgefield had control for much of its semifinal game with Greenwich, the Cards made a late run, scoring three times in the final 3:36 and twice in the final minute, to tie the score at 8-8.
Senior Jim Dunster netted the tying goal off a feed from senior Ryan Benincasa with just 15.2 seconds remaining.
The final goal of the game was as unlikely as it was dramatic.
Benincasa, the Virginia-bound faceoff specialist from Greenwich, had won 17 of 18 face-offs on the day, but the Tigers’ Luke MacKenzie came up with the final ball.
MacKenzie moved it ahead to sophomore Mike Galione, who charged the net before flipping it over to junior Matt White on the left side. White fired it into the cage as the horn sounded and the Ridgefield Tigers exploded into celebration.
“We were obviously unsettled there and tried to set up a little fast break,” White said. “I was shouting my head off at (Galione), who probably had a shot, but he dropped it down to me and I was able to throw it in there.
“It was high and low, up and down,” White said. “It felt so great up by two with two minutes left and then they come back and tie it up and we were dejected. We got a time out and got our air back in us and we knew we had a shot even with 15 seconds left. Their face-off man dominated the game but we still knew we had a shot and I don’t think we ever lost sight of winning this game.”
Ridgefield appears to have Greenwich’s number this spring, having handed the Cardinals (15-2) their only two losses this spring. Earlier this year, the Tigers blindsided the Cards in a 13-10 game at Tiger Hollow.
The two teams could meet a third time in a loaded state Class LL tournament which also features defending champion Fairfield Prep.
This time around, Ridgefield had to overcome two momentum surges by Greenwich — one early and one late.
The Cardinals’ Dunster and senior Sean Sutton scored in the first minute of play for a 2-0 lead, but the rest of the first half was all Ridgefield.
The Tigers got back in the game with goals by Matt Baker and White to tie the game, and senior Jordan Tiger scored the go-ahead goal with 1:45 to play in the first quarter.
Junior Colin Scott and Mike Galione netted the only goals of the second quarter as the Tigers went to the halftime break with a 5-2 lead.
The Ridgefield defense, which featured fine performances from DePrima (17 saves), Jon Mirra, Peter Schielke, Matt Galione, Casey McKnight and MacKenzie blanked the high-powered Greenwich offense for better than 24 minutes into the second half.
“We started off with a man defense and from the last game, they knew we would do a zone so they practiced a zone and then we give them man, so they were thinking 'when are they doing the zone we practiced for?' ” DePrima said. “We switched that up later on and I think that threw them off and that’s what led to this W.”
“They all played great,” White said. “Any time you hold a team like Greenwich to eight goals, it’s a big accomplishment. Brad stepped up huge like he does every game in the goal, Schielke, Johnny Mirra, Luke MacKenzie, Casey McKnight — they all stepped up. Everyone’s just working hard right now and we feel like we’re in a really good spot.”
Greenwich broke its scoreless drought in the third period and closed the gap to two goals heading into the fourth quarter.
A costly penalty on Greenwich gave Ridgefield a man-up advantage with just over four minutes to play. Scott took a feed from Galione and fired one past Greenwich goalie Kyle Feeney (nine saves) for an 8-5 lead with 3:52 remaining.
Greenwich responded quickly as midfielder Ryan Benincasa won the next face-off, got the ball up to Jared Horowitz, and Horowitz scored to make it 8-6 with 3:36 remaining.
The lead was still two with a minute left, but Greenwich scored twice in a 34-second span, first on a goal by Horowitz and then on a Dunster goal, assisted by Benincasa, tying the game with 15.2 seconds to play.
But the Tigers had one last moment of glory on tap, and White did the honors to put the team in line for the FCIAC championship.
White, Scott and Tiger all finished with two goals for Ridgefield, and Galione had a goal and three assists. For the Cards, Horowitz had four goals and an assist, Dunster had a hat trick and Sutton scored once.
“You’ve got to love it,” White said. “It’s the best feeling in the world knowing that our town has never been here before and we’re the team that’s going to bring it to them. Since my freshman year, we never won a playoff game. Wednesday (in the quarterfinals) was the first playoff game I ever won. We knew we could do it. We’ve got great kids on the team, everybody wants to work hard every day in practice and we’re able to step up every day. That’s what you’ve got to do to win games like these.”
Rams Rally Past Top-Seeded Darien Girls
With her team trailing Darien by 11-7 at halftime of the FCIAC girls’ lacrosse semifinals, New Canaan coach Kristin Wood urged her Rams to turn up the heat on the league favorite.
“We’ve got nothing to lose girls, just keep going hard and play like you want it,” Wood said. “We’ve been doing this for two and a half months now, you know how to play. Just get it done.”
The speed and thoroughness with which the Rams followed through on that command was startling.
New Canaan came out and scored the first six goals of the second half, racing past the State’s top-ranked team for a 13-11 lead with 15:57 remaining.
The Blue Wave responded with three straight goals after being shut out for more than 10 minutes, but with 4:26 to play, New Canaan junior Veronica Lizzio fired a breakaway pass ahead to junior Jenny Simpson, and Simpson dumped it low into the net to tie the score.
Darien’s Courtney Bennett had a chance to put the Wave back in front with 2:30 left, but had her free position shot blocked by senior goalie Maddie Mauk (seven saves).
New Canaan then gained possession with about a minute and a half remaining, and held the ball in the Darien zone for the final shot.
As the time clicked down past the 15-second mark, Simpson cut in front, received a pass from sophomore Kacey Pippitt from behind the net, and scooped in the game-winning goal with 11 seconds to play.
“Pippitt made a great feed to me, saw me open, and I don’t really know where that came from, but it was really, really exciting,” Simpson said.
“We just knew what we had to do,” Simpson said. “We were down by four and we knew we had to step it up and play our hardest. Darien is our biggest rival and we played with a lot of heart.”
Simpson and the New Canaan offense was firing on all cylinders in the second half, outscoring Darien 8-3 in the final 25 minutes.
The Rams overcame not only a 6-1 deficit in the first half and the four-goal halftime hole, but also the memory of a 12-7 loss at Darien earlier this year. The Wave dominated that game and knocked the Rams from the undefeated ranks.
“This is amazing,” sophomore Alexandra Crerend said after the semifinal win. “It’s such a feeling of accomplishment because we’ve worked so hard for this. It’s something as a team we knew we could do. They probably thought this game would be like the first one and we came into it knowing we could play up to their level and better, which is what happened.”
Simpson led the offensive attack with seven goals, including five in the second half. Crerend had three goals and two assists, sophomore Meg Boland had a hat trick, sophomore Anjalie Christie had two goals and Lizzio and Pippitt each had two assists.
For the Wave, junior Amy Marchesi had three goals and three assists, Bennett and sophomore Caroline Ceglarski had three goals each, senior Caroline Spillane had two goals and an assist, and juniors Sam Stevenson and Clemmi Little and senior Caroline Frelinghuysen also scored.
“We haven’t done this in so long and people don’t expect us to win these games,” Crerend said. “But we’ve always known we could beat them. We knew that if we worked hard, focused and executed, we could beat them.”
Dave Stewart, the Sports Editor of the New Canaan (Conn.) Advertiser, is a MaxPreps.com writer and photographer. He may be reached at 203-966-9541 or at sports@ncadvertiser.com.
