After losing to Saints Peter & Paul twice in the regular season, Archbishop Curley found the right adjustments to win the MIAA B championship.
After dropping a pair of games this season to Saints Peter & Paul, the Archbishop Curley boys lacrosse team needed to find an adjustment ahead of Friday’s MIAA B Conference championship if they wanted a third straight crown.
The Friars did what they needed to do, making key tweaks in their game plan and execution to send them rolling over the Sabres, 18-9, for a dominant championship win at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
Offensively, the Friars had scored just 15 goals in two games against the Sabres this season, but according to coach Chris Ogle, it was a concentrated effort on shooting and execution that led to the outburst on Friday evening.
“We focused a lot of the last two weeks on shooting,” Ogle said. “Spent 20-30 minutes a day working on shooting, talking about fundamentals, shooting to the right locations.”
That much paid off, as the Friars were absolutely clinical on the offensive end, burying 13 of their 19 shots on goal en route to a 13-3 halftime advantage. Meanwhile, their offensive firepower was backed up by a stingy defensive effort that focused on one core tenant: Don’t let Sabres leading scorer Jacob Rardin (66 goals, 19 assists) be the difference.
All game long, Curley sent double teams at Rardin, refusing to give him an inch of space whenever he had the ball, forcing him to pass it off and minimizing any potential shooting lanes he had. At times, Curley even left backdoor opportunities open in order to get a second defender in Rardin’s grill, and their perpetual harassment of the Sabres’ offensive star led to a bevy of turnovers and shot clock violations.
“Going into it, it’s our third time playing them, we just wanted to take him out of the game, free up our better defenders on other guys, and just make other guys beat us,” Ogle said of the Curley defensive strategy.
Curley utilized a full team effort, with five different players notching at least three goals. Carter Gianelli, James Zingo, Brandon Mejia, Matt Ramirez and Gavin Albright all tickled the twine at least three times, with Zingo leading everyone with four goals. Zingo also dominated the draw circle as part of a tandem with Ryan Comegna, combining to win 11 of 15 first-half draws.
“James Zingo is one of the strongest players I’ve ever coached at Curley,” Ogle said, “He does it all. The fact that he can face off and generate his own offense is a huge bonus for us.”
Curley took control of this game from the start, as Gianelli found the back of the net twice within a minute of the opening whistle, sparked by two clean Zingo draw wins. On the first, he worked his way from left to right before curling around and finding an angle to shoot, roofing his shot just 28 seconds into the contest.
Next, Gianelli and junior attack Ryan Kenny played a little bit of hot potato, passing the ball back and forth on the left side until Gianelli’s defender overcommitted, opening up a lane for the senior to whip in a right-handed shot for his second of the afternoon, this one 58 seconds into the game.
After the first Curley turnover of the game, senior defenseman Carter Baynes gave a strong effort to keep the Sabres off the scoreboard, delivering a strong stick check on a dangerous shot attempt that forced the ball to trickle wide and out of danger.
After forcing a shot clock violation, the Friars got the ball back. Cooper Granados fed Zingo, who just beat his defender with speed around the left side, cutting back to the middle to fire home a low bounce shot for a 3-0 lead.
Mejia and Ramirez tacked on goals, with Granados tacking on another assist on the Ramirez tally. Ramirez’s goal came on the heels of a strong defensive effort as he scooped up a key ground ball with the Sabres threatening on the offensive end, racing down the sideline. He threaded a clearance pass to Gianelli, who found Granados. Granados had a potential shooting lane, but he delivered a crisp pass to Ramirez coming down as the trail runner in a 5-on-4 situation. The sophomore caught the pass in stride and made no mistake with a blistering bounce shot.
Ramirez was a sparkplug defensively and he turned that defensive momentum into three goals of his own, a breakout performance for the sophomore defenseman.
“This was a coming out party for Matt Ramirez. He’s shown that ability in practice and struggled to put it together in games — he’s been right there. And today, it happened for him. I’m excited to have two more years with him.”
Such became the story of the first half as the Sabres could do very little offensively, putting just four shots on target in the first half, flustered by continuous defensive pressure. Down 5-0, the Sabres finally found the back of the net with 16 seconds to play in the first quarter — only to see Curley strike back 11 seconds later, as well as again, eight seconds into the second quarter.
The Sabres closed to 7-2 on a second goal by sophomore Grant Messick, but Curley then held the No. 1 seed scoreless for over 10 minutes, generating a 6-0 scoring run to essentially eliminate any doubt before halftime.
Granados, after assisting a pair of early scores, got on the board with a goal of his own to kickstart the run, while Albright tallied a pair in the stretch.
Up 13-3 at halftime, the second half was a glorified coronation, as Curley never allowed the Sabres closer than eight goals. That came when a little three-goal spurt spanning the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth brought the score to 16-8, but Zingo and Ramirez added to their individual point totals with two goals, 36 seconds apart. The Sabres added one more goal, but there was no scoring over the final six minutes as Curley saw out the result and earned the coveted three-peat.
Curley graduates 16 seniors that delivered the school three straight championships. Albright, Ramirez, Granados and Mejia headline the returning contributors that will be back in an effort for a fourth.
“That [senior] class is outstanding,” Ogle said. They’re great kids, great young men. They bleed black and crimson. A joy to be around, and they have left their mark on Archbishop Curley.”
