Gladiators clinch share of Howard County title
Glenelg jumps out to early 4-0 lead, holds off Eagles in fourth quarter
The last time the Glenelg boys lacrosse team won the Howard County championship, in 2013, midfielder Mark Darden and attackman Nick Forrest were dominating for the league’s best offense, leading the Gladiators to the state championship game for the second straight season.
Since then, the Gladiators, despite a run to the last year’s state final, have watched Howard reel off three straight titles and Marriotts Ridge take the championship last season, earning what they feel belongs to them. While the fate of this year’s Glenelg team is to be determined, one thing it will share with that 2013 team — aside from being able to score from anywhere on the offensive end — is being crowned county champions.
On Wednesday, the Gladiators jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first five minutes and held off a late rally by host Centennial for a 10-7 victory. Glenelg remains the only Howard County team unbeaten in league play at 7-0 and improved to 12-1 overall. A win against River Hill on Friday night would give them the county title outright.
“It’s one of our goals and has been one of our goals since wesat downand talked before the season. I think these kids worked pretty hard to get there,” Gladiators coach Josh Hatmaker said. “There was some adversity along the way. We’ve played some big games and been down, but this team is a pretty focused group of kids. We intend it to be an outright, but they’ve earned everything they’ve got.”
Junior midfielder Tyler Reiff did what he has done all season for Glenelg: score big goals in the biggest games. He had three first-half goals, while Kyle Dry and Eric Gruber added two apiece in the first three quarters. Michael Doughty, who led the team in points entering Wednesday’s game with 62, had four assists.
Centennial trailed 10-3 after Glenelg’s Tyler Nalls found the back of the net 36 seconds into the fourth quarter but, as it did in a one-goal loss to Marriotts Ridge, roared back with a big fourth quarter. Charlie Hockersmith scored his fourth goal with 9:35 left and Peter Krawcyzk scored two goals in 16 seconds to cut the deficit to 10-6. Jeremy Wilson, who leads all county players with 70 points, added to his total with an unassisted goal with 2:54 remaining.
The Eagles (9-4, 5-3 county) had a two-man advantage in the final 35 seconds but couldn’t capitalize and lost for the third time in five games.
“It wasn’t the deficit as much as it was our own mistakes. We made a lot of silly mistakes and we knew we had to play a clean game and we didn’t,” Centennial coach Nick Kellinger said. “And then they dominated us in ground balls, which led to a lot of possession that we didn’t want to give them.”
Hatmaker echoed a similar statement after the victory.
“We turned the ball over too much. That was a huge part of it,” he said. “We had opportunities early on and we were clicking, we liked what we were getting but we just turned the ball over.”
The first five minutes of the game proved to be the difference considering Centennial outscored Glenelg 7-6 over the last three and a half quarters. Gruber and Dry scored 12 seconds apart within the first minutes, and Reiff scored his first a little more than a minute later. All that came before the Eagles had their first touch in the offensive zone.
“When you get stretches like that and you have the momentumlike that, you don’t want to kill it, and a lot of times it’s us killing it with our own turnovers,” Hatmaker said. “We want to string them together — that’s what championship teams do. ... A lot of times we talk about [how] the only team that can beat us is us and the mistakes we make.”
Dry’s second with 7:03 on the clock made it 4-0, and they took a 6-2 lead into halftime and extended the advantage to 9-3 after three quarters.