Wildcats Top Long Island Lutheran, 13-10, in Season Opener

By Mitch Silver

When Head Coach Brian O’Callaghan sent his Rye Country Day Boys’ Lacrosse squad out against visiting Long Island Lutheran High School April 3, neither he nor his team knew what to expect, because this was their first matchup.

By the time the game was one minute old, the Wildcats had scored two goals after winning two faceoffs. Senior co-captain Braden Bass scored the second goal, the first of three coupled with three assists, before suffering an injured wrist that would send him off the field for x-rays.

The Crusaders came back with two quick goals of their own before the Wildcats went up again at 7:26 on a beautiful fast break goal. Long Island Lutheran came right back, and it was 3-3 when freshman attacker Joseph Rafferty scored on a left-handed shot after a beautiful spin and leap that lost his man. Sophomore middie Blake Jachman made a nice cut down the middle that resulted in a fifth home-team goal, and freshman attackman Milin Torgalker added a sixth with 12.4 seconds left in the period.

The second quarter was all Rye Country Day. They shifted from man defense to zone and back again, confusing the visitors. Meanwhile, the attack moved into high gear, with Torgalker scoring again before junior attack Alec Davis netted three in a row, the last one while a man up.

The Crusaders pulled themselves together after halftime, dominating the X and scoring four times in the first seven minutes of the third quarter. Davis, though, scored his team’s 11^th goal with two and a half minutes to go before the fourth quarter began.

Davis basically put the game away half a minute after play resumed, when he scored after the Wildcats recovered a loose ball just outside the Crusaders’ crease. The visitors scored three times in the final twelve minutes, but it was too little, too late. Junior Nick Vlasto spent most of the last five minutes stopping shots, but his clearing passes kept the Wildcats in charge.

Rye Country Day travels to Kingswood-Oxford April 10 before returning to Rye to face the Frederick Gunn School April 12.