Staples finishes at No. 1
Wreckers finally break through to win their first title
Staples was knocking on the door of its first boys lacrosse postseason championship for two years. The Wreckers reached their first FCIAC final last year and lost. They lost to the eventual champion in last year’s Class L tournament. They got taken out in the FCIAC semis this year.
To stretch the door analogy to its limits, on Sunday, Staples grabbed the doorknob and didn’t let go until it got inside the circle of champions.
The Class L champions are a unanimous No. 1 in the season-ending GameTimeCT Boys Lacrosse Top 10 Poll, usurping the position Darien had held all season and unanimously since a regular-season win over the Wreckers on April 28. Staples turned the tables Sunday with a 12-3 title-game victory.
The Wreckers finished 14-6 in 2019, coach Will Koshansky’s first season, and reached the Class L semifinals before falling to eventual champion Darien.
“My first year, 2019, we had a strong season,” Koshansky said Sunday. “We ended that season, and we said that everything that comes in the future was going to be built on the culture shift those guys started, and today is when that came to fruition.”
Staples had reached three previous CIAC finals: the old Division II final in 1999, falling to South
Windsor late; and the 2013 and 2014 Class L finals, losing to Fairfield Prep and Greenwich. It went out in the first round last year to Ridgefield in a first-round game that, with the bracket unbalanced, certainly looked like an early semifinal.
But they avenged that game in this year’s (actual) semifinal and avenged all those Darien losses in the final.
“Those last three years, those classes, the Class of ‘20, that didn’t even get a spring season (amid the pandemic),” Koshansky said, “those guys changed the work ethic in the offseason. Last year, we knocked on the door, but we didn’t get it done, but this year we were able to finish it off. I’m just really, really proud of all the guys who have played the last four years, who have put in
the work that led to this moment.”
Staples’ only loss in its last 13 games since that April 28 defeat at Darien was to Wilton, 7-6, in the FCIAC semifinals. The Class M champions came in third in the poll, behind Darien, whose only other losses were on the road to New Canaan and Brunswick.
The Warriors — who were second, a spot ahead of Staples, in the pre-tournament poll — were disappointed to land in Class M by enrollment and not have a chance to battle with their usual rivals for a title; they reached the Class L final in 2019 and the semifinals last year. They got past a test in this year’s quarters, beating Hand in overtime.
“I think at the beginning of the season, we were struggling in the beginning of games. Even against Hand, same thing,” Wilton coach Steve Pearsall said Sunday. “It kind of came back and haunted us.
“We mixed up our warmup, shortened our warmup to try to find what was going on and change it, but we came out in the last two games pretty fast. We seemed to play better offensively when we were playing fast, you know? And regardless of the score — they seemed a little careless at times; it does result in more turnovers than you’d like, but — it just seems our offense plays better when we’re playing fast.”
Darien received 11 second-place votes to Wilton’s four.
Ridgefield finished fourth in the poll after that overtime semifinal loss to the champions. Fairfield Prep, the other Class L semifinalist, was fifth. Two Class L quarterfinalists from the FCIAC, Greenwich and New Canaan, held on at sixth and seventh.
Cheshire, which lost to Wilton in the Class M semifinals, was eighth, ahead of Hand. Class S champion Weston eked its way past Fairfield Ludlowe into 10th.
Class M finalist Notre Dame-West Haven got its first votes since the preseason, and Class S finalist Northwest Catholic got its only vote of the season.