By John Raffel
MaxPreps.com
Brother Rice made it look easy in taking one of four lacrosse state championships that were up for grabs in Michigan over the weekend In Division 1 boys.
The Warriors ended their season at 22-1 with a 17-7 topping of Detroit Catholic Central (13-6). Brother Rice had a 5-2 lead after the first quarter and improved it to 9-3 after the second quarter and 12-7 after three quarters.
Devin Peurach scored two goals in a 5-0 fourth-quarter run for Brother Rice. Peurach and Joe Fontanesi scored three goals a piece for the champs, who got 16 saves from goalkeeper T.J. Youst.
It's the third-straight Michigan High School Athletic Association championship for Brother Rice. The Warriors are a legitimate dynasty in the sport of lacrosse in Michigan, winning 10 of the last 12 titles with 14 overall.
"It feels great," Brother Rice Coach Rob Ambrose said. "Obviously there's a lot of pressure to win. It gets tougher every year. We played our best game of the year. We came to play."
Brother Rice won the state title despite having a young team.
"We're primarily a junior-dominated team," Ambrose said. "This game, we put together everything offensively and defensively."
Division 2 Boys
East Grand Rapids ended its season at 19-3 with a 14-10 victory over Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood (14-6) in the title game of the Division 2 lacrosse tournament.
Joey Coretti led East Grand Rapids with six goals. East had a 4-2 lead after the first quarter, 9-4 in the second (when the game was tied 4-4) and 12-8 after the third.
Andrew Miller had three goals for Cranbrook-Kingswood. Alex Carmichael had 10 saves for East GR and Adam Wells had nine for C-K.
"Anytime you get into the championship game, you can fall into the trap that our seniors fall into of putting too much pressure on yourself," East Grand Rapids coach Adam Vincent . "But our guys answered the call. We were ready for this game."
Vincent credited his team's regular-season schedule for preparing his team for the postseason.
"We played in Detroit against some of the best teams in the state," Vincent said. "In Saturday's game, you were breathing a little easier when you put another goal on the board. Our defense did a nice job of covering Cranbrook's best guys preventing that extra pass to set up another score."
"We lost to them in the state finals last year and wanted revenge," Coretti, who racked up 77 goals this season, said.
Division 1 Girls
Birmingham United ended its state championship season at 20-5 with a 16-2 whipping over Ann Arbor Pioneer, which ended its season at 12-5-1.
United dominated from the very start, scoring the eight goals in the first half and enjoying a 10-1 lead at halftime.
Pioneer (12-5-1) scored the first goal of the second half, but United crushed any comeback dreams by putting in the final six goals of the game. Emily Bastian had five goals while Chelsea Beans had three goals to lead the winners.
Junior Emmy Scheidt was the winning goalkeeper with seven saves.
"It's the first state title since I've been here and that's five years," Birmingham United coach Jen Dunbar said. "It was definitely one of our strongest games of the year."
Division 2 Girls
Amy Martin made 15 saves for Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart, which ended its season at 14-5-2 following a 15-8 championship victory of Okemos (18-2).
Sacred Heart had a 9-5 halftime lead, thanks to two goals a piece for Kathryn Steigerwald and Alexandria Vincenti. Steigerwald added two more goals in the second half, sparking a 6-3 scoring advantage in the final half. Amy Martin had 15 saves for Sacred Heart.
Softball
Michigan high school sports for 2006-07 ends this weekend with the finals for baseball, soccer and softball.
In softball, one of the teams that advanced to the state semifinals this weekend was Bay City All Saints, which won a quarterfinal game earlier this week the unique way: via a perfect game.
Sophomore Louise Rezmer retired all 21 batters she faced in a 3-0 victory over Vestaburg at Frankenmuth High School.
"She and Megan Eddy from Bath are probably the best two pitchers we've seen this season," Vestaburg freshman third baseman Megan Cole said. "We just couldn't hit the ball."
Rezmer's pitching was so impressive that she never went to a three-ball count on any Vestaburg batter.
The sophomore flamethrower also pitched a perfect game earlier in the season, the first in school history.
