Derryfield boys lacrosse hands Hollis Brookline its first loss

HOLLIS – Chris Hettler knew that Tuesday’s lacrosse game at Hollis Brookline High School was going to be as big as a regular season contest gets.

The Derryfield School coach saw how much buzz the matchup between the undefeated Cougars and the undefeated Cavaliers was getting online, and he decided to stir the pot a little more, hyping the game to his players.

Whatever Hettler did, it worked, as Derryfield rolled past HB, 16-5, in front of perhaps the biggest lacrosse crowd ever on the Cavs’ home field. Cars overflowed from the parking lot and fans stood three deep in some places along the far sideline.

“It was incredible, for a Division III game and for high school lacrosse in New Hampshire,” Hettler said. “I saw stuff on Twitter and Facebook, and it was incredible to see the excitement for this type of game, and for high school lacrosse.

“We tried to hype this up as much as we could to put them in a pressure situation, to see how they would respond. Come playoff time, we’ve got to win four games and anybody can have a bad day. We put a lot of pressure on these guys and we built it up. I wanted to see how they’d respond with some nerves and they did a great job.”

The Cougars (13-0) got six goals and two assists from Grant Alenson while Jimmy O’Brien added three goals and three assists and Matt Milne had three goals and two assists.

The game was tied early when O’Brien scored with 7:34 left in the first to start the Cougars on a 5-0 run. HB scored twice in the second quarter, but Derryfield answered each goal and led 8-3 at halftime.

Derryfield went on another 5-0 run to open the second half, going up 13-3 with 4:33 left in the third.

“I don’t think it was anything different than had happened all game, it was just that we missed a lot of assignments and missed a lot of slides,” HB coach Mike Soucy said. “We were struggling in a lot of different aspects of the game. You give a quality team like that a lot of possession time and that many opportunities to score and they’re going to and they did.”

The Cavs got two goals from Ryan Papineau and Patrick Dunn had a goal and two assists. Sam Whitaker and Zach Nardone also had a goal each, while Logan Blake made 11 saves.

While the loss drops HB (10-1) into third in the Division III standings – Hopkinton also remains undefeated, but doesn’t play either HB or Derryfield – both teams thought there would be a pretty good chance of a rematch. And if both teams win out, that rematch would have to take place in a championship game.

“It’s just like anything else,” Soucy said. “We’ll make some adjustments and we’ll be better the second time we play them, if we have that opportunity. That’s an if. There are a lot of good teams. There are plenty of games left to be played.”