Boys Lacrosse Sports Spring Sports

Boys Lacrosse Improves Season With Blowout Win Over NMH

Darting up the field, Nick Bevacqua ’19 dodged past a defender, leaving the Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) player splayed on the ground, and ripped a shot past the goalie to lead the team to a 16-1 victory this Wednesday.

Andover’s win was preceded by a 12-5 loss against New Hampton this previous Saturday. The team’s record now stands at 2-3. Coming off a loss against New Hampton, Andover was looking for a chance at redemption.

In the game against NMH, Bevacqua said, “Today we all had a chip on our shoulder from being embarrassed on our home field last Saturday. There was no messing around before the game and we came out strong and ready to go.”

Post-Graduate (PG) Ben Anthony ’16 said, “Today we came out really excited to play and started the game with a lot of energy. We focused on keeping that energy throughout the game and worked on staying focused with our fundamentals of passing and catching.”

In between its game against New Hampton and NMH, the team worked hard to make sure the result would be different.

Reed Findlay ’18 said, “We took time in practice to focus on the little things and get better and better every day. We definitely came out strong versus NMH but didn’t have the composure as an offensive unit that we would’ve liked.”

Co-Captain Nick Ellerton ’16, a PG, said, “This week in practice we really focused on getting back to basics and cleaning up our fundamentals on both sides of the ball. We cleaned up our offensive sets and passing. We focused a lot defensively on our play off-ball, and we did that well today as well. Our offense played a strong game, but there’s always things to work on. We still have to work on perfecting our offensive plays but today was a good confidence boost game and it was good to get a lot of different guys reps.”

In its game against New Hampton earlier this week, the team struggled to gain traction. After the first half, the team trailed 6-0. Despite this deficit, the team was able to rally and score 5 goals making the final score 12-5.

Findlay said, “As a team, we didn’t come out with as much intensity as we needed to. The entire first half we didn’t settle on offense to get a good shot and we dug a hole for ourselves going into the second half.”

In an email to The Phillipian, Head Coach Stephen Moreland said, “We were really flat and struggled in every aspect of our game. Zero intensity and very poor execution.”

The loss against North Hampton served as a wake up call, and the team is now working hard to improve its game.

Ellerton said, “This week we have a couple practices to keep working on our off ball defense and perfecting our offensive sets going into the long weekend looking ahead to our next game against Brewster.”

Bevacqua said, “We need to work on executing our plays better and playing more disciplined offense. A lot of it is a matter of passing and catching, but we have to be more proficient at our offensive plays.”

The team hopes to continue its upward trajectory in a game against Brewster on Wednesday.