Cougars, Rams go outside of SMAC
Boys lax teams compete in Stone-hosted tournament
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The Thomas Stone boys lacrosse team hosted a four-team tournament that consisted of county foe McDonough, Montgomery’s County Northwood and Anne Arundel County outfit Glen Burnie on Saturday.
In a tournament that gave all four teams the chance to face different competition outside of their league or conference, Saturday proved to be not only a tough test but a good learning experience for Southern Maryland Athletic Conference counterparts Stone and McDonough.
Each team played twice on the day. The Cougars lost to Glen Burnie, 21-2, then to Northwood, 12-2.
“It’s a good chance for us to play outside of SMAC and helps us gain experience against teams that are better than us,” said Stone head coach Adam Lowe, whose team dropped to 0-3 overall on the season. “We are gaining game experience. This is only our third game now, so we have about nine more games in the conference to play. We are going to take it week by week and keep on improving.”
McDonough (2-2) collected its first losses of the season, falling to Northwood 9-6 in the first game and 18-2 versus Glen Burnie.
“I think our starters hung well with the two teams that we faced. We just lacked depth and experience at the lower lines,” McDonough head coach Michael Ferriter said. “We know that these schools were bigger than us, so we didn’t expect to win these games, but we did expect to be competitive and we were.”
Though falling big against a Glen Burnie team ( 2- 1) that featured a fast and high- powered offensive attack, scoring a combined 39 goals int its two wins on the day, McDonough did much better in its first game earlier in the day against Northwood.
In that game, the Rams took an early 2-0 lead, but Northwood led 5-3 at halftime, an advantage it would not relinquish for the rest of the game.
Leading McDonough offensively were senior attackers Alec Cabrera and Nick Leverich with two goals each, while seniors Alex Gillissen and Darin Gardner added one goal each in the losing effort.
In the Glen Burnie loss, Cabrera and Damion Hock each scored a goal.
“In the first game, we had a lot of penalties and gave up too many short- handed goals and it just deflated us for the second game,” Ferriter said. “We weren’t as ready and excited in the second game and that just comes with the experience. Everyone knows that Anne Arundel County and Montgomery County schools are very good. But we got everyone to play, we have eight seniors, so we got some underclassmen to play.”
Following its loss to Glen Burnie, things did not get any easier for Stone versus Northwood, which had a fast offensive attack and was very physical.
Northwood (3-1) took a 4-0 lead in the first quarter and led 6-0 at halftime. In the third quarter, the Cougars still trailed 8-2, but Nick DiGiovannantonio scored both of Stone’s goals in the period.
“Obviously we wanted to win, but we faced two tough out of county teams, so this was a learning experience for us,” said DiGiovannantonio. “We just have to keep on putting in a lot of work. This tournament just lets us know how much we need to improve.”
“Like all the teams today, we are all building trying to raise the community, with lacrosse, Northwood head coach James Potts said. “This was good for us and I know the Thomas Stone coach pretty well and owed him a trip down here and he was able to put a tournament together.”
Potts said that after the 1 1/2-hour drive to Stone it took his team awhile to loosen up early in the first game, but they were to be productive.
“I don’t know if we were a little sleepy or tired, but once we got rolling we really saw what our potential could be,” he said.