What was already a great season for the Westhill boys lacrosse team crossed into historical territory the moment the Warriors’ tense 11-10 victory over Christian Brothers Academy in Saturday’s Section III Class C semifinal at East Syracuse Minoa Stadium came to a crashing conclusion.
When CBA’s Zach Taylor’s last-second shot to force overtime flew wide of the net and the clock hit zero, Westhill had, for the first time in program history, made it to a sectional championship game.
Better yet, when the Warriors do go to the Carrier Dome next Wednesday night, it will get one more chance to conquer defending sectional champion Cazenovia, something it could not quite pull off in a pair of regular-season classics that ended in overtime.
At least for a moment, though, Westhill could savor what it had accomplished. Ryan Zimmerman, who led the Warriors with five goals and three assists, said that this win was as much for the teams in the program’s past that could never get this far.
Taking that last step to the finals was never going to be easy. Early-round wins over Holland Patent (23-1) and Homer (10-5) brought Westhill, the no. 2 seed, to a battle with no. 3 seed CBA, with whom it split a pair of regular-season meetings, each side winning on the road.
The Brothers’ challenge lay in trying to guess which star would hurt them. In this instance, CBA put a lot of its energy into containing Casey Rogers, and Rogers would not get a point.
However, that left room for Zimmerman, who would burn the Brothers throughout the game, starting with two goals and two assists in the first quarter amid an exchange of goals that left the Warriors in front, 4-3.
Early in the second period, Westhill threatened to get away as Zimmerman, Mark Purcell and Richie Easterly hit on consecutive goals to stretch the lead to 7-3, but Lincoln McGarrity and Sam Martin answered with goals before Purcell converted with 7.2 seconds left in the half.
Ahead 8-5 at the break, the Warriors slowed the pace in the third quarter and, in the process, went cold, not getting on the board, which meant that goals from Jace Whalen and Ben McCreary reduced Westhill’s lead to one, 8-7, with one period left.
Again, Zimmerman took over in the fourth quarter. He assisted on one goal and scored two others, the last of them coming with 5:30 left that answered McGarrity’s tally and made it 11-8.
From there, the Warriors attempted to run out the remaining clock, and it almost did so. But with less than two minutes left, the pressuring Brothers forced a turnover and set up a wild ending.
Zach Taylor found the net with 1:22 left, and in doing so took a hard hit, leading to a one-minute penalty. Getting the ball back, the Brothers pushed again, and it was Whalen getting the goal with 48.6 seconds to play, again cutting the margin to one.
The Warriors won the ensuing face-off and called a time-out, but then turned it over in the waning seconds, enough time for the Brothers to fling it downfield and give Taylor a chance at a tying goal from a tough angle, but he flung it wide as the horn sounded.
Westhill then watched as Cazenovia beat Skaneateles 11-6 in the other semifinal, setting up the title-game clash.
Those earlier OT defeats to the Lakers – by a 7-6 margin in an April game that lasted three extra periods, and by a 10-9 margin earlier this month in a game where the Warriors could not hold a 9-4 lead, were disappointing, but also showed Westhill that it could beat Cazenovia. If it can, that will mean even more history.
