One year later, and on the same turf at Liverpool High School Stadium, the Jamesville-DeWitt boys lacrosse team went after Westhill – and after the Section III Class C championship.
Through hard work, tenacity and fine all-around play, the Red Rams got both, defeating the Warriors 12-10 and resuming its familiar place as a sectional champion seeking much more.
Strong out of the gate on offense, J-D was matched and topped by Westhill, who led 4-3 after one quarter. But the Rams’ defense settled down and, in the second, managed to hold the Warirors to a single goal.
With time to get out in front, J-D did so, taking a 6-5 advantage to the break and then maintaining that slim margin through a tense third-quarter exchange.
But early in the fourth quarter, J-D’s Aidan Bates hit on back-to-back tallies. When Westhill cut it to 10-8, the Rams countered with Gannon Kessler’s fourth goal and a Lucas Patchen conversion with 5:40 to play.
Yet the Warriors weren’t done. Luke Gilmartin, again carrying much of Westhill’s attack, landed his sixth goal and, with less that two minutes left, a J-D major penalty gave the Warriors an extra man for the rest of regulation.
Owen Etoll converted his third goal with 1:28 left to cut the margin to two, but J-D didn’t allow anything more and reclaimed the sectional title against the same Westhill team it lost to in this same round on this same field one year earlier.
Ian McIntyre anchored the defense, finishing with 13 saves, three more than Westhill counterpart Keller O’Hern. Helping Kessler in the attack, Sam Brazell had two goals and two assists, with Patchen also converting twice. Alex Binsack and Graham Kesserling had one goal apiece.
Getting to this title game wasn’t easy for either side. Westhill had to pull out a 9-8 decision over New Hartford in the first semifinal May 26 at Fayetteville-Manlius before J-D took the field against no. 4 seed Homer.
And much of the game between the Rams and Trojans was on even terms – save for a second-quarter outburst that stood out and allowed J-D to prevail 14-9.
Entering that period, Homer led 3-2, but its defense got run over by a Rams attack that would convert seven times in those 12 minutes to grab a 9-5 edge at the break.
All through the rest of the night, J-D was able to withstand all of the Trojans’ attempts to catch up, largely thanks to Kessler, who found the net six times and added a pair of assists.
Helping Kessler out, Mario Streiff had a three-goal hat trick, Brazell adding two goals and one assist. Single goals went to Bates, Kesserling and Nick Miller. McIntyre stopped 11 of the 18 shots he faced.
Westhill fell next, and J-D was back in the state Class C tournament, ready to take on Maine-Endwell in Saturday’s regional final at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium.
It never proved close as the Rams, anchored by a relentless and dominant defense, ran over the Spartans 13-1 in a game where it jumped out 5-0 and never was seriously threatened.
M-E’s lone goal came in the second quarter, but otherwise J-D’s defense completely thwarted what the Spartans wanted to do, limiting it to 10 shots, nine of which were stopped by McIntyre.
Kesserling and Streiff led the attack, each of them earning four goals. Two more came from Kessler, with Brazell getting a goal and two assists as Dan Diel and Andrew Laubenstein also found the net.
Now J-D heads to the state Class C semifinal, where Wednesday at SUNY-Cortland it faces Section V’s Honeoye Falls-Lima, the winner to go to Long Island’s Hofstra University for Saturday’s 3 p.m. state final against Rye or Manhasset.
