Warriors (7-5) travel to Belmont tomorrow
THE WAKEFIELD DEFENSE was locked in against Woburn, holding them to just four goals on Friday. Pictured, Zack Brissette (77) and Thomas Harrington (13) defend while goalie Ryan Chambers (1) protects the net. (Donna Larsson Photo)
Published in the May 7, 2018 edition.
By DAN BYRNE
WAKEFIELD—On Friday, the Wakefield Memorial High School boys’ varsity lacrosse team hosted Woburn at Landrigan Field. The Warriors were riding high with confidence after a one-goal win over Arlington in their previous game, and a few solid practice days before the Tanners showed up, and the preparedness showed as the Warriors claimed a 12-4 victory.
Wakefield came out strong right off the opening faceoff and got the upper hand early.
“It all started with the first faceoff, “Fitz” had a monster game,” head coach Andrew Lavalle said after the win, as senior co-captain Ryan Fitzpatrick led the way for the Warriors with three goals in the game.
“It’s nice to have “Fitz” on the field. When he is off the field we’re really a truly different squad,” added the coach.
Lavalle was proud of his team for coming to play against a strong Woburn team and executing adding, “They have really good, talented players on Woburn. It was nice to have “Fitz” match up with those guys and shut them down.”
After a first half that saw the Warriors establish a 6-1 lead, and a nearly perfect third quarter saw the lead grow to 8-1, the win was there to be had.
“Through three quarters we were solid,” Lavalle said, though Woburn scored the first three goals to cut the lead to 8-4, making it close momentarily. In the final six minutes, the Warriors came back and finished strong, extending the lead to 12-4.
“This week we had a heart-to-heart with the team, and talked about what it really means to care,” Lavalle said. “Our biggest problem throughout the year has just been effort through four quarters. We asked guys to dig deep and work a little bit harder. That’s what we did today. It was nice to dig deep.”
“These guys dug deep for three quarters, that fourth quarter we started to fall apart,” the coach said. “We definitely got complacent at the end. We were doing some things we’re not used to doing, we kind of got back to it towards the end and finished off strong there.”
It wasn’t all Fitzpatrick on defense, as the Warriors did well to keep Woburn from getting shots at their net.
“Matt Petitto had another beautiful game,” Lavalle said, “Offensively, Bobby Guida had a great game, he said yesterday he was feeling it and he knew he was going to go off and he did.”
Guida had a three-goal performance to help his team to victory.
“On the offensive side, I think Alex Joly was a real matchup nightmare for them. The thing was, once he got the ball you could see the other team not want to d-up on that guy. He dropped his shoulder, put people into the ground, and finished his shots and that was huge.”
Joly finished with a pair of goals.
Lavalle knows that it helps having your goalkeeper as one of your best players.
“Just having (Ryan) Chambers in net is unbelievable, he makes stop after stop.”
The struggle for the Warriors this year has been getting all their players available. On being under-staffed and under-manned Lavalle said, “That’s an excuse, we don’t need excuses we need results.”
“The fact of the matter is, you practice how you play,” he said. “It’s not something you can turn on and turn off. Being focused on the field is a laser beam, not a flashlight; once it’s on we have got to keep it on.”
One thing Lavalle noticed was his team’s improvement in basic skills.
“I thought the things we did really well and have been focusing on lately was throwing and catching. That’s the big part of the game we’ve been focusing on and we hadn’t been doing that well lately.”
He also noticed an improvement in possession.
“We possessed the ball better than we usually do, that’s usually not our strong suit.”
“We stayed focused, we stayed positive and as a result we were able to get this W,” Lavalle said to conclude.
Looking ahead he added, “We have a huge week with Belmont and Wilmington next week. We’re ready to go on both those teams we just have to show up and execute.”
