So much went wrong for the Fayettevile-Manlius boys lacrosse team during last Tuesday night’s season opener against Syracuse, from dropped passes to wild shots to turnovers to penalties.
And yet the Hornets shut out the visiting Cougars for more than three quarters of play and had a great chance to win it before getting toppled in the last seconds of regulation and taking a tough 5-4 defeat.
The prospect of overtime was quite real when Syracuse possessed the ball late in the fourth quarter. Having squandered an early 4-1 lead, The Cougars had gone more than 36 minutes of game time without a goal, but had not paid a steep price for those struggles.
So it only figured that, as regulation time wound down, Syracuse got one more chance. Sterling Claflin, who had two of those four first-period goals, picked up the ball in the left corner.
Seeing the clock, Claflin rushed toward the net, flanked by an F-M defender, but even though the Hornets’ defense was good, Claflin still forced his way to a point-blank position where he flung a shot past F-M goalie Ryan Boshart with five seconds left for the game-winner.
That still didn’t obscure the superb work of F-M’s defense, who had struggled picking up Claflin in the early going. His two goals, combined by those from John Elliott and Jack Kane, had Syracuse in early command.
But as that F-M defense settled in, things got tighter. Still trailing 4-2 at halftime, the Hornets made its only sustained push early in the third quarter, moving within one on Donovan Welsh’s goal less than a minute into the period and tying it when Welsh converted again less than three minutes later.
It stayed 4-4 for a long while. A flurry of third-quarter penalties gave both teams all kinds of man-up chances, but none of them were converted.
Boshart worked his total to eight saves and Syracuse counterpart Robert Martin made six saves, also contributing several aggressive runs far out of the net in order to try to draw the Hornets’ defense to him.
That didn’t work, and the string of missed opportunities continued until Claflin used the last opportunity to net the game-winner.
And now F-M had more work in front of them, starting in Saturday’s game against at Marcellus. Again, it was close – but the Mustangs, who had never beaten the Hornets before, did so here by a 12-11 margin.
Stung by its past history with F-M, the Mustangs were fired up at the outset, roaring out to a 5-0 first-quarter lead. F-M recovered from there, gradually making up the ground behind Donovan Welsh’s six goals and two assists.
The Hornets even led in the third quarter before Marcellus regrouped and, with the score 10-10, got back in front for keeps late in the final period.
Ultimately, Riley Donovan’s goal with 40 seconds left that made it 12-10 proved the game-winner, since F-M pulled back within one and nearly forced overtime, only to see Mustangs goalie Dan Cusick make two big stops in the waning seconds (his 19th and 20th saves of the game) to preserve the slim margin.
Filtch and Hutchings led Marcellus most of the way, each scoring four times as Filtch added a pair of assists. Donovan finished with two goals.
Other than Welsh, no other F-M player had multiple goals, with Dan Burnam getting a goal and two assists as Tommy Ryu, Brett Barlow, Luke Hamel and James Rettinger had one goal apiece. Ryan Cicci joined Hamel in the assist column as goalie Sam Lipe made nine saves.
