Hopewell beats Somerville to reach sectional semis
HOPEWELL TWP. » Lucas Gaissert remembered the feeling of being a freshman and seeing his senior teammates exit with a loss to Somerville in the 2019 state tournament, so Gaissert and the rest of this year’s seniors had one thought on their minds Saturday morning. Redemption.
In what has been a coming-of-age season for Hopewell Valley boys lacrosse under coach Matt Foret, the fourth-seeded Bulldogs downed fifthseeded Somerville at Ackerson Field, 15-5, to earn a win against their nemesis and a spot in the South Jersey Group II semifinals.
“I’m glad that this year we came out strong. We’re good enough to just beat all these teams and do so well this year,” Gaissert said after leading all scorers with seven points (three goals, four assists). “To be honest, for this game we weren’t worried at all really. We know that this season we’ve worked hard to be one of the best teams around and we played against some good teams like this, too. We just really come in with a little scout plan and we’re good.”
Hopewell (15-3) entered the week ranked 20th in the state and is proving to be one of Mercer County’s best teams in recent memory.
Simply put, these Bulldogs have a deep lineup of quality players and are well-coached. Senior Louis Azara scored four goals, senior Luke Long netted three, junior Jacob Sanderson and sophomore William Beck each added two, and freshman Ryan Foret contributed the final goal.
“We had five different attackmen score goals, and that allowed us to put some of our attackmen in the midfield and help in the clear because their ride was giving us trouble late in the game, and I think that was really important,” Foret said. “Our depth really I think been a huge advantage to us all year. The kids have really bought into that in terms of just playing really pure team lacrosse. It was such a team effort. It wasn’t one guy having a dominant game.”
Gaissert is bound for Stockton and Azara will play at Montclair, but Hopewell doesn’t have Division I talent. Instead, the Bulldogs rely on being crafty and keeping defenses on their heels with relentless passing, dodging and off-ball movement.
“Once you can put six guys out on the field that all can pass and catch and shoot and dodge, it just makes it hard for teams,” Foret said. “There’s so many teams out there where there’s four guys you’ve got to worry about, and maybe there’s two guys that aren’t up to the level of everybody else. So having that depth of offensive talent, and they like each other, they get along, they play as a unit, they’re really unselfish.”
Eleven of Hopewell’s 15 goals were assisted. Sanderson had four assists, while freshman Luke Caldwell, senior Kevin McManimon and senior Aiden Kepes each had one.
“We just start with stick skills every day,” Gaissert said. “We really focus on that, especially toward the end of the year it’s not really as much the endurance and stuff. It’s more about just keeping the stick skills nice, right and pristine for those passes.”
Coming off a 20-0 shutout win against Sterling in the first round, Hopewell also continued to play stout defense against Somerville (10-8), which features three players with at least 30 goals.
“I did not anticipate us winning in the fashion that we did, so I’m really proud of the guys,” Foret said. “We’ve been working really hard defensively especially, trying to clean some things up in terms of our slides and our rotations and I think our defense played their best game of the year. I think Kyle Pisauro and Owen Seibold, especially as senior leaders, did a tremendous, tremendous job to hold these guys to five goals … and (goalie) Cutter Swanson, who it feels like he gets better every game, played outstanding.”
Foret attributes his team’s depth to the fact that nearly all the players were on last year’s team that lost seven games by three goals or less. They learned from those failures, and when you combine that with a strong freshman class, you get a dangerously confident unit.
That culture has allowed players like Gaissert to have breakout seasons.
“I played summer with Tri-State so I played against some really good competition, and also just I felt like this year I knew the time I had,” Gaissert said. “I knew what I could do and I just really wanted to show it.”
The Colonial Valley Conference champions will next get to show what it can do against a powerhouse program.
Top-seeded Rumson-Fair Haven, the defending sectional champion, will host Wednesday’s semifinal.
“It’s going to be a huge challenge but it’s something we talked about going into this game is we wanted to win this game to take on that challenge,” Foret said. “To a man, the kids are really excited to go out and measure ourselves against a team like Rumson. We’ve got some really nice wins this year, we’ve played some good programs. Somerville is a great program — it’s a huge win for us — but we haven’t played a team that’s really in that top-10 in the state, so we’re really excited to go out and see how we match up.”