Submitted by Langley Lacrosse:
May 19, 2011: A four-goal night for Oakton middie Sean Schweicker was not enough to cancel out his Cougars’ sluggish first half of a season-ending, 11-7 Northern Region quarterfinal loss to the Langley Saxons on Thursday night. Oakton middies Mike Durst, Cory Harris and Brad Mason added single goals of their own during an inspired comeback bid, but the six-goal lead the Saxons had forged by the later stages of the second period eventually proved too steep for the Cougars to overcome on Langley’s home ground.
Saxon attackers Mike Adams, Sean Ahearn and Jack Sandusky, and middie Hunter Bentz, each provided two goals, while defender Robbie Byrne and middies Luke Salzer and Spencer Gorham scored one apiece in a winning cause.
Langley junior Andrew Spivey guarded the cage and was credited with nine saves while his Oakton counterpart at the other end, junior Connor Anderson, produced a dozen saves.
The Cougars had pared the deficit to two by the end of the third quarter, with a last-second strike by Schweicker to close out the third frame at 8-6, in addition to outstanding goalkeeping by Anderson during that period, giving the visitors reason to believe that a complete recovery was within their reach. But the Saxons wavered no further, with some superb shot stops by Spivey and fourth-quarter goals by Sandusky, Bentz and Gorham providing the cushion the hosts needed to get to the finish line a few strides ahead.
Oakton found its way to the Regional quarterfinal against Langley with a 10-7 win on the road against National District second seed Edison Eagles (10-5). The Saxons booked their passage to the contest with a smooth 16-0 victory over Patriot District fourth seed T.C. Williams (7-9). The Cougars hosted Langley in a regular season, out-of-district meeting in early May that went the Saxons way in a 15-4 workover just prior to the two teams’ respective district play-offs.
Anderson, who was unavailable for the earlier encounter due to a hand injury, was back in net for Oakton, although junior middie and face-off specialist Evan Lalande was forced to watch his Cougars from the sideline due to his having sustained a concussion suffered in Oakton’s Concorde District semifinal game against Robinson. Langley had all troops accounted for and fully healthy to face the Cougars.
And the Saxons started the evening much the way they managed the previous meeting against Oakton, gliding to a 5-0 lead at the end of the first quarter and up 6-1 late in the first half. When Salzer snapped in a bounce shot past Anderson with less than three minutes left to the half it looked as though nothing could really go wrong for the Saxons this night.
Byrne grabbed the game’s first goal right out of the opening face-off, with the sophomore receiving an assisting pass from senior longstick winger Brenden Dwyer and drilling in past Anderson for the dream start in the first minute of play.
Ahearn doubled the lead for Langley at the midpoint of the opening quarter, shooting in from ten yards at the end of an assist from Salzer. Sandusky added a third less than a minute later, followed by an Adams’ strike from near the crease that was set-up by Salzer.
The Cougars were awarded a man advantage late in the opening period but a choking Saxon defense, and a timely block and steal by Byrne, prevented Oakton from getting off any shots during the stretch. Adams then added a second goal at the end of a superb, end-to-end sequence that saw Salzer gaining possession deep in his defensive half from where he fed fellow middie Clay Rivers to complete the swift clear. The Langley junior picked out Ahearn, who in turn fed Adams for the finish and a 5-0 Saxon lead with 21 seconds left in the period.
Sandusky then set up Bentz to shoot in low past Anderson from 12 yards out early in the second quarter for a 6-0 Saxon advantage. The Cougars finally solved Spivey, with Harris rifling in from five yards out with an assist from junior middie Stephen Lambrides.
Salzer’s goal restored the six-goal lead for the Saxons, followed by Adams coming close to adding another in the final minute before the intermission but Anderson executed a terrific point-blank save to keep his Cougars within a half dozen. Then Schweicker connected with a deflected pass that had fallen to his feet, which allowed the junior to grab the groundball and fire in past Spivey only seven seconds before the half-time horn, the late-arriving score seeming merely an afterthought rather than any hint of things to come.
That goal, and Coach Grif Barhight’s half-time talk, was surely the tonic for an Oakton fightback. And that commenced swiftly after the re-start when Langley defender Chandler Suk mishandled the ball in his defensive area after his support had made their advance. Mason was the beneficiary of the loose ball and ample, unguarded space between him and the Saxon goalie, and the junior dispatched past Spivey from 12 yards out barely a minute into the second half.
The Cougars nearly added a fourth goal only two minutes later when Langley senior middie John Martins allowed the ball to trickle from his possession in toward Spivey’s crease but the goalie was alert to the danger and prevented the easy score. But Oakton then was awarded a man advantage cdue to a slashing penalty, which allowed Schweicker to furnish a nicely taken extra-man goal from eight yards out with another assist for Lambrides.
The Cougars continued with possession after the ensuing face-off and were rewarded with Schweicker’s third of the game just over a minute later, with senior attacker Sean Miller providing the assist, to get Oakton within a pair of goals with the score now 7-5.
Adams forced Anderson into a fine save soon after, followed by a stretch of play with the Saxons defense conceding possession rather cheaply and yielding a series of shots that Spivey turned away. An illegal body check call then gave Langley a one-minute man advantage that saw heavy assault from the Saxons, with Bentz then Ahearn hitting the goal pipe, followed by Anderson stopping another promising shot from Bentz.
Ahearn finally fired in past Anderson late in the third quarter on a left-handed shot from six yards off of an assisting pass from Adams to increase the margin again to three. But Schweicker supplied his third goal of the period with only one second remaining in the frame at the end of a nice move that had the junior curling around from behind the cage and flicking in from close range for the 8-6 score.
But that was as close as the Cougars would get to leveling matters. Extra-man goals from Sandusky and Bentz doubled Langley’s lead to four goals, although traffic in front of goal was heavy at both ends, with Spivey needing to be quick to grab a menacing outside shot from Oakton sophomore attacker Jack Harris, and Anderson put to the test by a couple of searching shots by Salzer and an Ahearn volley that was kept out by the pipe.
Durst employed a swim move to get by his marker and snap in past Spivey late giving the Cougars some hope, but Gorham claimed possession on the following face-off, broke free from the scrum and took advantage of an unguarded net during Oakton’s effort to press the play forward, shooting in from distance to seal victory for his Saxons.
Oakton, the tournament’s third seed from the Concord District, finishes its season with a 9-9 record overall. With the win, Liberty District top seed Langley (15-2) moves on to a semi-final contest at Oakton next week against Patriot District top seed Annandale Atoms (14-2), who were 9-8 winners over the Robinson Rams (10-5) on Thursday.
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