Aces Come Up Short in Radnor

The Aces scored a season-high in goals yesterday and surrendered a season-low.

It still wasn’t enough for a win.

The boys’ lacrosse team’s rocky start to 2011 continued on Tuesday, as the young Aces fell to rival Radnor 8-7 and dropped to 0-4 on the year.

Lower Merion got two goals each from Craig Markman and Anthony Fisher in the Central League defeat while the Raiders were led by junior Ben Junior, who record three goals.

Though the Aces staged a min-rally in scoring back-to-back goals early in the fourth period to cut the once 8-5 Radnor lead to 8-7, they were unable to generate any offense in the game’s final 8:50.

Despite the losing streak, Aces head coach Casey O’Rourke is unperturbed. He sees growth.

“We’ve got a young team,” said the similarly young O’Rourke. “We’re fighting, and we’ve had some young guys step up, but we’ve got to keep working on fundamentals. The effort was there though.”

After finishing the first two periods of the match down 5-4, the Aces played the Raiders to a scoreless draw for the first ten minutes of the third. Both teams delivered frenetic, and occasionally discombobulated performances.

The uneven play was epitomized by a sequence involving Lower Merion goaltender Eli Newschaffer (who, with 20 saves, was otherwise spectacular). In the middle of the third, Newschaffer made a nifty save, but on the subsequent outlet pass badly under threw his defensemen and landed the ball squarely in the pocket of a Radnor midfielder. The fortunate Raider charged the net and took an open shot, only to be denied what looked to be a sure goal by a diving Newschaffer.

Inconsistency aside, the Aces drew even when Cooper Eisenhard broke through the Radnor defense and netted an unassisted goal with 1:22 remaining in the third.

Their momentum was short lived though, as Radnor’s Mike Barnes skipped a bouncer past Newshaffer less than a minute later to restore the Raider lead, and then with time expiring in the period, did a summersault in front of the Lower Merion net, caught a pass as he flung forward, and used the resulting momentum to propel the ball into the back of the net for a 7-5 lead. 

The two goals, Barnes only two of the afternoon, were ultimately a blow the Aces couldn’t recover from.

“Things happen,” said O’Rourke when asked about the unlikely, and decisive, goals. “That stuff happens sometimes.”

A minute into the fourth, the Raiders scored again to pad their lead.

Radnor later withstood a pair of goals by the Aces’ Daniel Buckman and Anthony Fisher to hang on for their third win of the season.

The Aces next play April 7, at home, against Conestoga.