No. 12 Conestoga boys, No. 6 Radnor girls win Pennsylvania lacrosse titles

Canestoga wins back title from No. 22 La Salle; National Player of the Year candidate Kelyn Freedman leads Radnor to historic victory and title.

Thumbnail image of this articles writer: Joseph Santoliquito
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Jun 12, 2010, 12:00am
HERSHEY, Pa. - The message was a simple one, yet powerful: Get back. It didn’t matter to the Conestoga (Berwyn, Pa.) boys’ lacrosse team who it was they would meet in the PIAA state boys’ lacrosse championship at Hersheypark Stadium. What did matter was that the Pioneers did get back to win the title they lost in 2009.

Conestoga got a little surprise along the way. On the opposite end of the state playoff bracket was powerful La Salle College (Wyndmoor, Pa.), the defending state champions which beat Conestoga in last year’s state title. Not that the Pioneers needed any added motivation — but it couldn’t come any more enticing than that.

This time, the Pioneers, who are ranked No. 12 nationally by MaxPreps.com, finished their unfinished business and won the PIAA state championship Saturday afternoon, surviving a furious late rally to beat No. 22 La Salle, 10-6, before a nice crowd in Hershey.

It’s the first time in Conestoga’s history that a boys’ team won a PIAA state team championship. The victory closed out the most successful year in the history of the Conestoga lacrosse program at 22-2, while a young La Salle team closed its season at 20-3.

“We had a very talented group of seniors, and it takes a special group that can play together and sacrifice personal glory for the team to do what they did,” said Conestoga coach Brian Samson, who did a fantastic job in molding a team that started out slowly on offense this season (by Conestoga standards) to becoming almost unstoppable in the last month of the year. “I think what makes this group so special is that they were all accountable to each other. This is a team made up of great friends.”

The one scare, however, is that this year’s championship game mirrored the outset of last year’s title match. Conestoga began strong last season, scoring the first two goals of the game before La Salle began rolling, and rolling, and rolling, winning going away, 7-3.

On Saturday, the Pioneers opened a 2-0 lead on goals from Peter Bowers and Jeff Chu (the first of four for the Michigan-bound senior), only to have La Salle respond with three unanswered goals, coming from Jack Bogorowski, Sean Coleman and Patrick Resch.

A year can change a lot of things. The seniors on this Conestoga team made up the bulk of last year’s team that was on the field when the Explorers came back on them. They weren’t about to let that happen again - and they didn’t.
Conestoga scored the next seven goals (Chu added three more, Jason Klunder twice, with goals from Ryan Lord and Ryan Buttenbaum). La Salle’s Christian Cardinal stopped the hemorrhaging on a goal with 8:39 left in the game.

By that time, Conestoga held a 9-4 edge.

“We were all looking at each other thinking the same thing, not this again, like last year,” Buttenbaum said. “We regrouped, got ourselves together and came back at them.”

The Pioneers had held La Salle scoreless for 30:05 between goals. Pioneers’ goalie Peter Zonino kept that lead intact with a nice save on a low shot from La Salle’s Dan Losier with roughly four minutes to play.

All looked pretty settled as the waning minutes of the game approached, but Cardinal wasn’t about to let go. He scored on two-straight feeds from Kevin Forster and Nick Cruise added another goal—pulling the Explorers to within 9-6.

But Conestoga’s Matt Smith shut down any hope of an improbable comeback on a goal with 1:42 left to play for the final 10-6 score.

“This is something we all had a feeling about,” said Buttenbaum, who’s headed to play lacrosse at Lehigh. “We’ve been playing together since we were all young on the under-9 team in our area. We all know each other, we’re all friends, and we all work together. I look around and see these guys, I’ll remember them forever.”

GIRLS
Radnor 14, Springfield 7

Radnor senior Kelyn Freedman kept saying this entire spring that the top would blow off some time, that some team was going to see a different side of Radnor girls’ lacrosse team, a decisive, emphatic version of the Red Raiders from start to finish.

That elusive complete game couldn’t have come under any better circumstances than Saturday’s PIAA girls’ state lacrosse championship at Hersheypark Stadium. And it couldn’t have come against any better opponent than Springfield (Delaware County), the Red Raiders’ chief Central League rival and the team that came closest to unseating Radnor as the defending state champions.

The time to explode came and it came at the right time—as Radnor was ferocious in building a big early lead en route to a 14-7 victory over Springfield to capture a second-straight state girls’ lacrosse championship.

Radnor, ranked No. 6 in the country by MaxPreps.com, completed another amazing season, going 26-1 overall and the Red Raiders are 50-2 over the last two seasons. Springfield, ranked No. 24 by MaxPreps.com, ended its season 22-3, with all three of the Cougars' losses coming against Radnor, once during the league season, in the District 1 championship and in the state finals.

From the outset, the Red Raiders left little doubt, surging to a 5-0 lead and leading by as much as 6-1 and 8-3. The closest Springfield came was 10-6, after Nathalie Basunga scored the second of her two goals. Otherwise, it was a route from the start.

“I kept saying it would happen, we would put everything together and play the way we’re able to play,” said Freedman, bound for Georgetown and who finished her incredible career by scoring over 200 goals with two more in the state title game. “We all came together as a team. We all said it, once we got a lead, no one was coming back on us. We didn’t slack off this time. This was the game we were looking to have.”

Radnor coach Phyllis Kilgour also pulled a little card out of her vast coaching pocket — placing Freedman on Springfield’s top scorer Shannon Burns, who finished with just one goal. Radnor, meanwhile, came at Springfield in torrents of offense, led by Courtney Campbell’s four goals and three goals each from Ali Martin and Ellie Kraus.

“It was all about playing as a team,” Campbell said. “Our team bonding has been amazing. We knew all about Springfield, and we beat them twice, but we weren’t going to take anything for granted. We prepared for this game and knew them so well.”

Apparently, Springfield didn’t know the different side of Radnor. The Cougars had lost the two previous times against Radnor, but led in both games, even opening a 6-1 lead in the first meeting between the two teams. They never led this time.

“We knew as seniors this was going to be our last game together,” Radnor’s Martin said. “Coach Kilgour told us before the game that if we worked hard, work together, we could beat them. She stressed the team factor.”

Now a very special team will be remembered as the two-time state champions, making history last year by becoming the first girls’ lacrosse team in Pennsylvania state history to a win a state-sanctioned championship and being the first team to repeat as state champions.

“It is pretty special,” said Freedman, looking down at her state championship medal. “Doing this is something I’ll remember for a long time.”

Joseph Santoliquito covers high schools for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a contributor to MaxPreps.com. He can be contacted at JSantoliquito@yahoo.com.

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