Hopewell ends season as state-ranked team with 15 wins
RUMSON » Growth is the key word that comes to mind when coach Matt Foret reflects on this special Hopewell Valley boys lacrosse season.
With the purest form of improvement, Hopewell went from posting a modest 5-11 record last year to being a 15-5 team that was ranked 18th in NJ.com’s top 20.
It didn’t inherit a dominant junior varsity squad or bring in transfers. Countless returning players simply looked themselves in the mirror, absorbed coaching points, made adjustments and worked all offseason and all spring to be the best versions of themselves.
“To go from a five-win team and really struggle to win games in conference, to winning the conference, winning 15 games, advancing to the state semifinals — it’s the improvement from the team,” Foret said. “Every player on this team is such a better player than they were last year, so I think that’s for me is the big thing is just the growth and the development of a group of guys just working hard over really a two-year period of time to get to the point where they could play really, really good lacrosse and be one of the better teams in the state.”
No one hung their heads Wednesday evening after Hopewell fell 14-2 to powerhouse Rumson-Fair Haven in the South Jersey Group II semifinals.
The type of lacrosse culture that has been fostered in Rumson is evident from the moment you walk into Borden Stadium. Young kids are wielding sticks and bouncing balls off a brick wall near the entrance, which is not something you see around Mercer County.
Rumson features about a dozen college commits including two going to Yale and another going to Villanova. Hopewell, meanwhile, will send seniors Louis Azara and Lucas Gaissert to Montclair and Stockton. So the
talent disparity was obvious Wednesday.
Yet Hopewell prided itself all season on being a team that did more with less: crafty footwork and stick skills, meticulous X’s and O’s, and cohesion as a unit above all else.
“It’s about finding the individual strengths of the players and finding a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together,” Foret said. “I think they’re really a team. The individual players really, really complement one another. Everyone brings something a little bit different to the team, and even though sometimes the individual talent might not be as high end as some other teams, when we put our pieces together, they fit together nicely. And we’ve ended up with a team that really plays well together.”
It all led to a Colonial Valley Conference championship and a run to the Mercer County Tournament final, where Hopewell fell by only three goals to Hun. In most years and some other state brackets, Hopewell would have been good enough to play in a sectional title game.
Rumson, unfortunately, was just too big of an obstacle — both literally and figuratively. But Hopewell did manage to hold Rumson to eight goals through three quarters, which was no small feat against a high-powered offense that welcomed back Yale commit Christian Bockelmann (three goals) from an injury.
“We watched a lot of film, we tried to know their tendencies and we tried to make their guys play to their weaknesses a little bit,” Foret said. “We tried to be as multiple as possible defensively: playing some zone, playing some man, tried to take some of their top guys out of the offense to interrupt their flow. I think at times we did a really, really good job.”
Other times, Hopewell threw the ball away on offense or couldn’t scoop a ground ball which led to a Rumson transition goal. Initiating offense in general was difficult because Rumson has so much length and brings grueling physicality on defense.
“It’s tough because you don’t have the ball a lot because they’re dominating possession,” Foret said. “Especially when we were in the zone, they were really patient, so they had some really long possessions … and then they were pressing out, so you can’t really run what you want to run. They really kind of took us out of what we wanted to run on offense, and then just three, big, athletic poles with great length. At times it just made it hard for us to even connect some passes together.”
In the end, measuring itself against one of the state’s top programs is what Hopewell wanted all along. Sophomore attackman William Beck netted his 22nd career goal and junior goalie Cutter Swanson had a career-high 20 saves, which should bode well for the program’s future.
But this team and its accomplishments won’t be forgotten. Hopewell was the only CVC team to reach a sectional semifinal, and the school hadn’t won this many games since 2014.
“That’s something we talked about — that it took a lot for us to earn the right to be here today. We certainly did with a great season,” Foret said. “The opportunity for our young guys to come out and see an elite program and how they carry themselves and how they play and how disciplined they are offensively and defensively in everything they do, it’s something that we definitely strive to be as much like a program like this as we can.”