West Boy's Lacrosse Beats Cross-Town Rivals East

An early four-goal lead allowed West boy's lacrosse to defeat cross-town rival East 17-7 in a wire-to-wire victory Saturday afternoon.

“Usually it’s a much closer game,” said West coach Sean Keenan. “We are a senior laden team and they’re young. They’re going to be very good in the future. I think my kids played really well today.”

West’s Kyle Keenan returned from a concussion suffered two weeks ago and scored three goals and assisted on four others. Matt Schultz and Ryan Joseph each scored four times for West and James Pannell contributed two goals and an assist.

“The past couple of years we’ve been on top but I remember as a freshman going back and forth with them,” Kyle said about the rivalry. “We lost to them and you don’t forget that, especially with the guys who were on the team reminding you about it all the time. It’s great to beat the cross town rival and come out on top.”

East, who now stands at 6-7 in league play, chipped away at the four-goal deficit early and was within 4-2 after a goal by Garry Watson with 15 seconds left in the first. Unfortunately for East, by the time Dylan Senft scored the team’s third goal West had scored eight straight.

“We possessed the ball and that helped us because we knew we had to go at their shooters because they have a lot of scorers,” Kyle said. “We wanted to keep the ball on offense.”

East closed to within 15-7 midway through the fourth quarter after goals by Watson and Cole Andersen – who also had two assists – but that was as close as they would get.

West pulled most of its starters in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.

“You just want to get out of there healthy and go into the playoffs with everyone back,” coach Keenan said. “We’re almost at 100 percent. We got Kyle back tonight and we’re just trying to get through the season and get the three seed and see what happens in the playoffs.”

The win pushed West closer towards locking up the three seed in the Suffolk County Class A playoffs and has one more tune up game against Northport before it begins its playoff run. West moved to 11-2 in league play with the win, firmly entrenched behind perennial powers West Islip and Ward Melville.

The loss leaves East needing a win in its final game to make the postseason and will visit Longwood on Monday afternoon.