Back on Top: John Jay Lacrosse Wins Sectional Championship

Everyone told head John Jay lacrosse coach Tim Schurr that it was really hard to beat the same team three times in one season.

On Wednesday afternoon, however, Schur's John Jay boys lacrosse team did just that, defeating rival Somers for the third time this season in the Class B sectional final held at White Plains by a score of 9-6. The Indians defeated the Tuskers twice during the regular season, 12-6 in early May and 9-7 in April.

The game was a rematch of last year's sectional final, in which Somers edged John Jay 10-9.

John Jay dominated the opening quarter of Wednesday's game, racing out to an early 2-0 lead in the first four minutes behind goals by Forrest Walter and Brendan Morris. Somers hit the crossbar once in the opening period, but couldn't find the cracks in the Indians' defense and failed to get any truly good looks at the John Jay's goal.

After withstanding an early second quarter push by John Jay, however, Somers found some success in the transition game, and fired off three unanswered goals, all within 90 seconds to take a 3-2 lead.

John Jay's junior standout Mike Daniello stopped the Tuskers' run with 2:53 left in the half, tying the game at 3-3 for John Jay. That score would hold until the half.

"All year we've been saying we want every team we play to earn their goals," said Schurr, whose Indians are 8th in the Inside Lacrosse national rankings. "They got two that we felt as a unit they didn't have to earn. So we tried to tighten that up."

John Jay did just that in the second half, surrendering only one goal in the third period, and holding Somers scoreless for the first 11 minutes of the fourth quarter. In a 13 minute stretch that lasted from the early stages of the third quarter to the middle of the fourth, the Indians scored six straight goals, including two within eight seconds of each other in the last minute of the third period. Somers scored twice in the last minute of the contest, but by then the outcome of the game was no longer in question.

"What worked best was our man-to-man defense," said senior defenseman Jameson Pickel, who will be playing for Johns Hopkins University next year. "We mixed in some zone but our man defense was really effective. We kept at them all day and it paid off in the end."

John Jay was without a couple of key players due to injuries against Somers, including Army-bound starting midfielder William O'Donnell. It made the victory that much more impressive and gratifying for Schurr.

"What we strive to do is put a complete game together," he said. "And as the season progresses we're getting closer and closer to that goal. We just want to keep going."

Not only did John Jay avenge last year's sectional final loss to Somers with Wednesday's win, but the Indians are now 18-1 on the year, and ride a 15-game winning streak into the state intersectionals to be held at Yorktown on Saturday.

"This was the same field and same team as last year," said John Jay junior Forrest Walter. "We knew we had to bring it. As soon as the horn blew my heart just leapt. I'm ecstatic right now. We played forty-eight minutes of good lacrosse and came out with the win."

Walter paced the Indian attack with four goals. Brendan Morris chipped in with two goals, while Mike Daniello, Jack Lambert, and Aevan Chen all scored once. Jake Weil added a team-high five groundballs.