Chatham High School (N.J.) Boy’s lacrosse may not have played one of its finest games this season, according to head coach Christian Scarpello.
But behind four goals and an assist from sophomore Nicholas Lagunowich, the Cougars got the job done, upending Kinnelon, 14-7, in the Morris County Tournament (MCT) quarterfinals Thursday at home.
“I was a little bit disappointed on how our defense played,” Scarpello said. “And then offensively, the same thing. We had so many shots that just weren’t on cage, with so many scoring opportunities that we didn’t convert on. So, I do think that if some of those go, the gap is pretty wide in a quicker period of time, maybe slowing them down and their comeback.”
Sophomore Charlie Dunn started the scoring off for Chatham (11-2) a little more than two minutes into the contest for a 1-0 lead.
Lagunowich followed with a tally of his own to increase its advantage to 2-0 with 5:45 left in the first period.
Senior Declan Leahy, junior Shep Boyd, and sophomore Quin Grosso all found the back of the net for a 5-0 lead at the half.
The Colts finally scored their first goal of the tilt 0.45 seconds into the second quarter to close the gap at 5-1.
Leahy responded with his second tally of the game to reclaim the Cougars’ five-goal advantage with 10:07 remaining in the period. Then, senior Ryan Grosso and Boyd followed with markers to swell Chatham’s lead to 8-1 with 8:36 in the second half.
Both teams exchanged goals to go into the locker room with the Cougars ahead by a score of 9-2.
Leading comfortably, Chatham hit a short-lived snag midway through the tilt, allowing Kinnelon (9-5) new life. But Lagunowich said the team will work on not permitting that to happen again.
“We hit a little bit of a lull in the middle of the game, but it was just little things like dropping passes, being sloppy in the middle of the field,” Lagunowich said. “We’ll certainly have it cleaned up in our next game.”
Again, both squads swapped tallies to make it 10-3 with 5:56 to go in the third quarter.
After the Cougars found the back of the net, the Colts answered with two scores to slice the deficit to 11-5 with 1:15 left in third.
Kinnelon tacked on another marker to make it a five-score game. But Dunn doubled up the Colts with a goal of his own to make it 12-6 with 5:06 remaining in the affair.
Lagunowich book-ended two more tallies to cap his scoring efforts, while Kinnelon sandwiched one of their own scores in the defeat.
Senior Matt Goldstein recorded three goals to lead the Colts.
At the time, Scarpello was not sure who Chatham would face, Mountain Lakes or Madison, Saturday in the semifinals. But he did say that the Cougars are prepared to battle whoever wins that matchup, and are pumped to get back to MCT finals, a title that has eluded the program, if everything shakes out accordingly.
“We’re ready to go for whoever won today,” he said. “We’re super excited to get a chance at it again. We obviously went there last year and did not play well at all. So, I think we’re just eager to hopefully get back and hopefully have an opportunity at (winning) it.”
Chatham will square off against Mountain Lakes Saturday at 1:00 p.m. at Cougar Field.
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