Vikings find their way back
East Lyme wipes out 7-2 deficit and wins seventh straight title
East Lyme — On one side of the field, East Lyme coach Gary Wight got drenched with a bucket of water during a postgame interview on camera following his team's Eastern Connecticut Conference tournament championship.
On the other side, Waterford counterpart Chris Landry dotted his sentences with sighs, hurting along side his athletes.
And those were just the emotions of the coaches Thursday night.
“This one's special, I think,” said East Lyme senior attack Sean Williams, named the James Courtney Most Valuable Player of the title game after a five-goal performance. “I love the Waterford-East Lyme rivalry. Scuffles are fun. I'm just so happy for all the seniors, the defense, the goalie, everyone.”
The top-seeded East Lyme High School boys' lacrosse team won its seventh straight ECC title 11-9, edging No. 2 Waterford before an excitable crowd at East Lyme High, but not without a great exertion of effort.
Waterford, which lost 10-7 to East Lyme during a regular-season game on May 4, stormed out to a 7-2 lead in this one, getting three goals in the first quarter from star junior Logan Bowdish. It was 4-2 after one quarter, with the Lancers' momentum building until they held a convincing five-goal lead with 3 minutes, 37 seconds left to play in the first half on a goal by Kyle Cardoza.
But the last minute and a half of the second quarter belonged to East Lyme's Williams, who Wight called a spitfire, saying “he wanted to put the team on his shoulders.”
Connor Schofner scored with 3:30 left in the half for East Lyme (11-7) to make it 7-3 and Williams followed with goals at 1:22 and 1:00, meaning by the time halftime came the Vikings trailed by just two goals (as opposed to five, seemingly just an instant before).
“I just wanted the half to come,” said Wight of looking forward to calming his team after a chaotic and penalty-riddled first half. “I wanted to de-escalate things. I told the guys, 'Let's not panic. If we just play our regular game in the second half, we can win. This is what we're about. We can swing things right around.'
“When we start swinging the ball around,
it's difficult to win against us. I knew what we had the potential to do.
“Early on, guys were trying to force things to happen. That's not our game.”
East Lyme's James McCoy made it 7-6 to start the third quarter and Larry Nolan scored assisted by Williams to make it 7-7, erasing Waterford's seemingly decisive early advantage.
The game was 8-8 when Schofner scored assisted by Williams with 11.2 seconds remaining in the third quarter and the Vikings had another goal by Schofner negated as time expired.
Matt Bauman made it 10-8 to begin the fourth and Williams scored the final goal for the Vikings with 4:59 remaining, increasing the lead yet again.
Michael LaForte scored for Waterford with 2:35 left for the final margin.
“We take pride in the ECCs, winning this,” said Wight of the game's emotions. “… This win us going to help us down the road; it builds character. (Waterford) was fired up. Chris had them ready.”
“(East Lyme plays) tough teams all year,” Landry said. “They play a full game every time and our guys do, too. I just feel bad for my boys. They play hard for each other. They're hurting right now. We're going to be playing Wednesday (in the state tournament); that's our goal. But I can see it in their faces. They wanted it. Gosh. This is going to hurt for a little bit.”
Williams added three assists for East Lyme. Schofner had two goals and Matt Boguszewski had a goal and three assists.
Bowdish finished with four goals for Waterford (16-2), which made it to the finals for the second straight season, and LaForte had two.
“(Waterford) started out just getting ground balls, hustling. They do a great job possessing the ball, keeping it out of our offensive end,” Williams said. “We just made it happen.” v.fulkerson@theday.com