Madison Boys Lax Suffers First Loss

Despite a strong fourth-quarter effort, the Madison High School lacrosse team suffered its first loss of the season, falling to Kinnelon, 10-7, on Thursday in Kinnelon.

From the start though, the Dodgers looked like their usual selves, controlling the ball for most of the first quarter.

What was uncharacteristic of Madison was its inability to put the ball in the net. Despite dominating the time of possession, Madison would come out of the quarter with only one goal scored.

But on defense, it looked like something was missing in respect to Madison's game as Kinnelon scored on both of its first two trips inside their offensive zone.

Kinnelon's second goal–which came with six minutes remaining in the first quarter, giving them a 2-0 lead–came after Madison goalie Ryan Colwell made a bad decision to force a pass from in front of the Madison net.

After a flurry in front of the net, Kinnelon was able to force the ball in.

"We just did things that we don't normally do," head coach Mark Sweeney said. "Kinnelon is too good of a team, so maybe we got away with [mistakes] against other teams, but not against a team like Kinnelon."

In the second quarter Kinnelon continued to capitalize on Madison's struggling offense and uninspired play on defense, as the Colts rattled off three straight goals, giving them a 5-1 lead.

Madison continued to drop passes and was only able to add one goal in the quarter, this one from captain Austen Lein.

After another Kinnelon goal, Madison went into the half trailing 6-2.

"We had opportunities early and couldn't capitalize. We let a good team get up on us and it's difficult to battle back," Sweeney said. "We gave them about five goals just standing around, bad clears and bad passes. Just mistakes."

The story continued in quarter three as Madison's struggles on defense remained noticeable, while on offense, the Dodgers added two more goals, one from senior Will Stuhler and another from captain Charlie Oldendorp.

Oldendorp was forced to leave the game during the third quarter with what is speculated to be a slight hamstring injury.

Trailing 9-4 in the fourth quarter and without the team's leading scorer in Oldendorp, Madison had its work cut out for them.

But the Dodgers made it exciting.

Four minutes into the quarter, sophomore middie Billy Battaglia scored, bring Madison within five.

Two minutes later, middie Michael Clemente got Madison even closer with his first goal of the day.

After Kinnelon added another goal with just over five minutes remaining, they would lead 10-6 putting the game just out of reach.

Two more Madison goals wouldn't be enough as the Dodgers fell for their first loss of the season.

"Hey, I don't know any teams that go undefeated in lacrosse so we'll just go back to work tomorrow and get ready for Summit," Sweeney added.