Landon Lacrosse 15 McCallie 4

The Blue Tornado graduated 17 players from its 2015 Tennessee State Championship team (their 8^th title) and blew into Bordley Stadium having just notched a 6-5 win over theretofore undefeated Severn. The school, founded in 1905, has an upper school student body of 665 and a lacrosse roster from 5 states from the Southeast and Ontario.

Like many games (hockey, too) the first period is a time for teams to test each other—evaluating opponents’ strengths, reading rides, assessing how to attack the other team’s D, finding the Goalie’s weaknesses (if any),etc. The adrenaline of the players during that initial excitement also affects play. Today’s first minutes followed that pattern.

The Bears scored first on a Zach Johnson pass to Ryan Pride @ 10:58. The McC team responded with a goal scored at 6:23. For the second face-off (as with the first) Justin Shockey (11/13 at the X for the game) printed toward the Blue Tornado Cage and passed it to Joey Epstein for a goal @6:17. The visitors added to their score with at 3:20.

END OF 1^ST Q BEARS 2 BLUE TORNADO 2

Whatever was learned in that initial play was translated to a dominant second stanza for the home team. The visitors were consistently frustrated in their clears, unable to consistently stop the Landon transition offense and were blanked at the X; that translates to Bear ball control.

Between 12:00 and 0:00, the White jersey team added six goals, as follows:

Time           Goal by               Assist by                      description

11:06            Zach                    —                               from a F/O win

8:33            John Geppert     Will Oliver                subs advantage

6:55            Zach                                                            McC coach screaming “righty”, scored with  left

5:33            John G                                                        sweep across the top

3:17            Joey                                                              dodge from behind

2:16            Colin O’Brien      Drennan Greene         fastbreak, nice feed   and  a double deke by   #2 on Crease

HALFTIME BEARS 8   BLUE TORNADO 2

The shut out,which started at 3:19 of the first period, continued to 6:08 of the third, that’s 21 minutes with no Tornado score. The D was stout and the Bears who prevent the opposition from scoring, includrd in this period:

• Shane Corcorran in the nets 6 saves),

plus

• close D– Andrew Fowler, Justin Conner, Mo Sillah Griffin Valentine, Doug Chirite and Will Amoroso,

as well as

• LSMs—Drew Wellington and Mo

and

• with the help of the SSDMs—Jalen Williams and others (many of these most talented athletes, who match up with the opponents’ middie studs, SCORED; so they will be recognized by name for their O skills)

Another factor contributing to the Bears’ ball control was the frequent success of their clears. In particular, Will Powell (a/k/a One Man Clear or OMC) used his incredible speed, ability to absorb hits and stick work to carry the ball from Shane’s (later Paul Kern’s ; 5 saves) crease and sprint past the other guys and deliver possession to his teammates.

This segment of the game accounted for 4 Bear tallies (one by the Blue Tornado):

Time           Goal by               Assist by                    description

8:43            Joey                    Drennan Greene

8:23           Brian Menendez                                       fast break after X win

3:49           Griffin Brown     Drennan                      EMO

2:12            Joey                      Colin

A Blue Tornado scored at 6:08

END OF 3^RD Q BEARS 12  BLUE TORNADO 3

The coaches used the last period as an opportunity to play more of the roster. Hopefully this is a full list; here are the Bears who got time on the field (in numerical order): Gilbert Sentimore, Chase Christensen, Brett Gallagher,Tommy Shull, Nick Mayer, Carter Johnson, Brendon Gallagher, Owen Concannon, Colby Camalier, Garrett Kurtz,Alex Hagerup). It was impressive that these players moved the ball well, followed the book on positioning on D, had good energy with the ball and cleared effectively.

An Andrew Whicker clearly-won-draw created s half field break and Joey scored @ 11:18. Tyler McTague scored an artistic goal @3:25.

[Obviously there was a 15^th goal, but the name, assist and time did not make it to the notes. SORRY—let me know who it was and the record will be set straight.]

The Blue Tornado (their name is singular , not the expected plural) got their final goal at 1:16.

FINAL SCORE  BEARS 15   BLUE TORNADO 4

KHARI BATEN “THAT’S A BEAR AWARD

Zach Johnson 3Gs 1A 1CT

Will Powell 5 OMCs 1CT and 5GBs