Hare on fire early as Boardman lacrosse team wins

By BOB ETTINGER

sports @vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Egan Hare set the tone for the Boardman boys lacrosse team and Christopher Barber made sure Cardinal Mooney couldn’t match it as the Spartans rolled to a 14-5 victory at Mooney on Tuesday night.

Hare netted a pair of goals in the opening minutes to get the Spartans (1-0) off to a strong start.

“Those were very important,” Boardman coach Dave Peters said. “That gave us the jump on them and we just ran with it. We definitely respect their program. We know the history of playing them in every single sport. We wanted to keep our cool and the game.”

Those first two minutes were exactly what the Cardinals (0-1) could not afford to surrender.

“I felt my guys got outplayed, outhearted,” Mooney coach Chris Joss said. “[The Spartans] are a fundamentally better team. They got groundballs and we didn’t. They were running through groundballs and we weren’t.”

Nick Beck added a pair of goals in the final minute of the first period to put Boardman up, 4-1, through the first 12 minutes. The Spartans controlled the ball and therefore the action for not just that first period, but the entire game.

“That’s what we teach them,” Peters said. “We won the faceoffs. That’s where you win the game. We got possession of the ball. We preach from conditioning Day 1 and the day the sign up, if they can’t pass and catch, they aren’t going to play. We went 10 middies deep today.”

Beck added two more scores in the second quarter and Dominick Barber and Steven Balentine each got on the board as the Spartans lengthened their advantage to 8-3 at the half.

“We try not to look back,” Peters said. “We stuck to the gameplan through the whole game. We were really not looking at the scoreboard. We start every quarter as if it’s 0-0 and we want to win that quarter.”

Chris Barber had nine saves in the win.

“I consider him the MVP of this game,” Peters said. “He made some tremendous saves there. He even chased the ball down after their shots and turned over possession to us and I preach possession.”

The onslaught continued in the third as Alexander Wood put the ball in the net twice and Hare and Beck each tallied again for a 12-5 lead.

“That was soft defense,” Joss said. “We’ve got to make them worry when they come inside and I wouldn’t have had a problem sending my daughter into that defense tonight. We just played soft tonight.”

The Cardinals played much of the night a man down as penalties kept men on the sideline and struggled to find good shots.

“Even when we had possession, we were taking a lot of stupid shots,” Joss said. “Honestly, we played dumb tonight. That’s the best way to put it. We had a lot of stupid penalties. We’ve got to play smarter. At the end of the day, that’s on me.”

Dominick Barber scored his second of the game in the fourth and Peter Fernandez III scored his first career goal to complete the scoring.

Mike Scavina scored three times for the Cardinals and Dino Daliso scored twice.