HOMER – A sixth state championship for the Jamesville-DeWitt boys lacrosse team is one victory away, thanks to a talented trio who took over Friday’s state Class C semifinal at Homer High School.
Having waited two extra days to take the field, the Red Rams overcame a shaky start on defense and pulled away to defeat Section V champion Honeoye Falls-Lima by a comfortable 13-5 margin.
In large part, this was energized, on offense, by the duo of Gannon Kessler and Sam Brazell, who combined for all but three of J-D’s goals, and on defense by Ian McIntyre, who stopped nearly everything he faced from the Cougars over the last three quarters.
That they were playing on Friday, at Homer and not at SUNY-Cortland as originally scheduled, was a byproduct of a 48-hour postponement caused by poor air quality resulting from winds that swept in smoke from brushfires in Quebec.
The delay did little to stop Kessler. In fact, he tore up HF-L all by himself in the opening minutes, striking for five goals in a span of less than seven minutes during the opening quarter.
Those were needed, too, since the Cougars were able to convert on a regular basis to answer Kessler’s hot streak and only trail 6-4 through one period.
From there, though, almost anything HF-L tried did not work against the Rams’ defense. Some of it was the work of Carson Corona, Daniel Diel, Zach Tiffany and the back line, but a lot of it was McIntyre making a series of terrific point-blank stops.
This gave J-D time to cool off, settle down and gradually put the game way. Brazell sparked this, already with a goal when he put in a behind-the-back shot midway through the second quarter and converted again 48 seconds later to complete his hat trick.
Though the Rams didn’t score much in the second half, Kessler would get his sixth goal and Brazell his fourth goal to go with tallies from Mario Streiff, Aidan Bates and Eli Goldberg.
Now in Sunday’s state final at Hofstra University on Long Island, J-D would try to get its first state title since 2016 against defending champion Manhasset, who beat Rye 13-6 in the other semifinal.
