Country Day Boys Lacrosse Wins State Title, 13-5, Over East Grand Rapids

BIRMINGHAM – It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

The Detroit Country Day boys varsity lacrosse team started the year with a 2-7 record. It finished the season Saturday with a 13-5 victory over East Grand Rapids in the Division 2 state finals at .

“I told them from day one we were going to start off rocky,” Country Day coach Bryon Collins said. “But we were going to make a good push into the playoffs.”

The Yellowjackets (13-7) finished the year on an 11-game win streak. Their last loss was a 10-9 nail-biter to the Pioneers, of all teams, on the road back in April.

Collins, in his first year as head coach, inherited a very young squad. He said he pushed his players very hard in practice to establish the kind of work ethic he knew they would need to win a title. It paid off on Saturday.

“There’s no secret to what we’ve been doing,” Collins said. “We’ve been preaching all year long, success only comes from hard work. It doesn’t matter what we run or what system we run. We’ve been in a lot of tight games, they’ve been so mentally strong and we’ve been in better shape then everybody.”

The game appeared to be another close contest in the first quarter. Jacob Coretti scored two goals in the quarter and his tally with 3:13 left in the first kept the score  close for the Pioneers at 3-2. 

Country Day didn’t waste anytime grabbing the momentum in the second quarter. Rob Prior scored the first of six straight goals for the Yellowjackets three minutes into the period.

They used the 6-0 run to blow the game wide open.

“In that run we were just moving the ball great on offense,” Harrison Rosenfeld said. “We were moving it, being patient, waiting for our looks and finishing when we had our chances.”

The junior scored the two of his four goals during that stretch, but the highlight of the run wasn’t one of his goals.

Rosenfeld pointed to a trick play that Country Day ran midway through the second as the score that really pumped up the offense. Bobby Weiner scored off a great pass from Scott Wolf. What set the goal up was a reverse fake handoff behind the net. 

East Grand Rapids couldn’t figure out who had the ball and it was too late by the time they did. 

“That was awesome,” Rosenfeld said, laughing. “We’ve been running that since the beginning of the season. It worked today, so it was great.”

Coretti scored his third goal of the game to end Country Day’s run 90 seconds into the third. The Yellowjackets responded with four more goals in the next two minutes to take a 13-3 lead. 

The strategy for Country Day on offense was to keep the ball on the edges of the field. Collins watched a lot of tape from the Pioneers' recent playoff games. He said he saw an opportunity against the pressure defense East Grand Rapids runs by staying back and making the defenders work on the outside of the field. 

“We knew that they were going to pressure us,” Collins said. “So we welcomed the pressure, we were just going to pull them out. They can’t stay with us, or at least that’s the way we felt. They couldn’t stay with our midfielders and we used their pressure against them.”

Country Day’s last title was in 2005 when it also beat East Grand Rapids 14-13.

The program probably won’t have to wait that long for another one. The Yellowjackets are only graduating four seniors and nearly all of their key players return next season and that could spell trouble for the rest of Division 2.  

Notes – Andrew Weinert and Weiner each scored three goals. Weinert added an assist for Country Day. Coretti scored all four of East Grand Rapid’s goals. The teams combined for six penalties in the final quarter.