Derryfield boys lacrosse controls tempo to knock off St. Thomas, reach D2 semis

MANCHESTER – The St. Thomas High School boys lacrosse team played pretty well defensively Saturday against Derryfield.

The Saints just had to play too much defense.

The No. 2 Cougars managed to control possession for most of the game, and once they got going, never looked back in a 10-3 win over No. 10 St. Thomas in the Division II quarterfinals. The win sends Derryfield to the semifinals, where it will face No. 3 Hollis Brookline at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Stellos Stadium in Nashua.

Derryfield (18-0) took almost 30 shots in the game and won eight of nine faceoffs in the first half, as the Cougars built a 5-0 lead.

“I told our guys, the faceoff circle was going to be key, and then in the defensive end, I thought we had matchups that we liked,” Derryfield coach Chris Hettler said. “If we didn’t give them easy goals, I knew the goals would come eventually. We didn’t score until there was almost four minutes left in the first quarter, but you could tell we were getting quality shots.”

Lee Sipes led the way for the Cougars with three goals and two assists, while Connor Glosner also had three goals and Eric Mayer had a goal and two assists. Brian Schwab, Robbie Dowst and Jon Maclean added a goal and an assist apiece and Avry Truex made 12 saves.

The Cougars needed that strong defensive play from Truex and teammates, as they couldn’t find a way to beat St. Thomas goalie Peter Schultz (12 saves) through the first seven minutes of the game.

Glosner finally got Derryfield on the board with 4:30 left in the first quarter, and he and Maclean both scored in the final minute to make it 3-0 going to the second.

“We came out taking a lot of shots and they just weren’t falling,” Sipes said. “We kept telling ourselves they’ll fall. Then the other team will start slowing down, we’ll get them out of our game and that’s exactly what happened. We started scoring and they had to change their game plan.”

St. Thomas struggled to keep the ball out of its end for long, as the Saints (9-9) didn’t get on the board until a goal by Sean Kelley made it 8-1 with 3:35 left in the third. Kelly, Jojo Grella and Andrew Geppert each had a goal for St. Thomas.

“We played great defense, but we played a lot of it,” St. Thomas coach Sean Houlahan said. “We played at least three quarters worth of defense. I’ll go back and watch film, but I’ll be surprised if we had 12 minutes of offense. That’s their game and we knew that coming in.

“They like to push transition when they can and when they don’t, they like to set their offense and run their game. Unfortunately, we let them run their game and we didn’t get to run ours.”

That made the five-goal deficit at halftime feel like a lot more to the Saints.

For Derryfield, the number of goals the Cougars scored didn’t matter as much as how many they allowed.

“If our defense can keep playing the way it’s been playing, and limiting opportunities like that, they’re spending so much energy and wearing down,” Hettler said. “They were playing great defense at first, but I think it’s demoralizing when you’ve played that much defense for that long and then Eric Mayer caught one by his ankles and puts it in, Connor Glosner catches one and puts it between his legs. We had to make spectacular shots.”