Ten minutes on a cold, wet March evening was all that the Jamesville-DeWitt boys lacrosse team needed to remind everyone that it won a state championship one season ago – and intends to do the same in 2017.
Mostly due to a first-quarter scoring blitz, the Red Rams sailed past Christian Brothers Academy 16-9 in Friday night’s season opener for both sides at a rain-soaked Alibrandi Stadium.
Though J-D took a fair share of graduation hits from the run to last June’s state Class B title, including Grayson Burns, it returned the other two-thirds of that lethal scoring line, senior Ryan Archer and junior Griffin Cook.
CBA also has plenty of returning players from 2016, when it lost in the Section III Class C semifinals to Skaneateles. They included front-line players like Alex Calkins and Ben McCreary, plus goalie Matt Vavonese. All of them were on a Brothers side that nearly beat the Rams during the 2016 regular season.
At the same time, though, the Brothers suffered some serious setbacks in the pre-season, from Jace Whelan’s torn ACL to injuries that kept Gabe Vinal and Tommie Caputo out of the lineup, tooo.
Still, hopes for the home team rose when Calkins scored twice in the first five minutes to counter early goals from Archer and Cook.
And then J-D took command in every phase of the game, starting in the face-off circle, where Cook and Jack Mulvihill took turns claiming draws that gained a series of possessions for the Rams.
Once it had the ball, whether in offensive sets or in transition, J-D used its combination of speed and skill to put in six unanswered goals. Archer had three of them, including one late in the quarter where, from the corner, he faked out a CBA defender, zipped past him and converted.
When the blitz was done, the Rams had an 8-2 lead going to the second quarter. For the Brothers, it turned the rest of the game into a prolonged, futile chase.
Calkins would tack on two more goals, while McCreary got three goals and two assists and newcomer Mike Matheson scored twice, but CBA could not put together a sustained scoring run to make J-D nervous, though Vavonese did have a superb effort, recording 17 saves, including a string of point-blank stops at the end of the the third quarter.
J-D’s attack balanced out by game’s end. Joe Kiesa and Casey Platenik joined Archer with four goals apiece, with Cook getting four assists. Matt Paul, Jai Benson and Jacob Rivasi earned one goal apiece.
