Sports
Video: West Boys Lacrosse Fall to West Islip in Championship
After being down 9-2, West tied it up to force overtime, but ultimately dropped the county championship 12-11 to West Islip.
West rallied from a 9-2 deficit against West Islip to tie the game send it into overtime Wednesday at Stony Brook University, but Brendan Smith scored for the Lions with 2:28 remaining in overtime to defeat the Bulls 12-11, and give West Islip its eighth consecutive county championship,
After Connor Braddish scored with 5:11 left in the second quarter the Lions held a 9-2 lead. West senior attack Kyle Keenan scored one of his three goals a minute later and Matt Schultz added a tally that gave the Bulls some confidence and sent them into halftime down 9-4. Keenan also contributed five assists.
“We were stagnant on offense, and on defense it seemed like they had an extra guy on the field,” Keenan said. “We went in at halftime and started playing Smithtown lacrosse again. It wasn’t our brand of lacrosse, we were holding onto the ball to long and we just turned into ourselves again. We got our heads on our shoulders.”
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West’s Ryan Joseph scored one of his three goals early in the third quarter to cut the deficit to 9-5. Schultz scored again for Smithtown to cut it to 9-6 and both teams scored late in the third, making it 10-7 heading into the fourth quarter.
West Islip was ahead 11-8 with less than four minutes to go until Frankie Reda scored for the Bulls to bring it to 11-9. Keenan scored again with just over two minutes remaining to bring it to within one and with 34 seconds remaining Alex Dodge scored the tying goal that sent the game into overtime.
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“In the last couple of minutes the momentum was going towards them,” Smith said. “But we had the confidence all along that we would score.”
But the Lions almost didn’t get that opportunity. Pannell had a chance with 3:05 remaining in overtime to score but was unable to beat the West Islip goalie.
“I knew he didn’t have much time and he faked high and I put my body up there and I saw his stick down low so I just dropped my stick,” Lions goaltender Kyle Turri said. “It felt really great but once it went into the back of the net on the other side it felt even better.”
West Islip moves on to play Farmingdale on Saturday for the Long Island championship and looks to defend as Class A New York State champions.
The Bulls’ season comes to an end but coach Sean Keenan said he’s proud of the resolve of his team.
“If you just go back and look at the individual efforts all over the field to make the comeback happen – it was because we played with heart and desire the whole season and we never gave up,” he said.
