Boys Lacrosse vs Santa Barbara

May 13, 2021

The rams represented themselves well in an exhausting loss against SBHS last night.
Harry McAdam ’23: 7 goals, 2 assists
Xander Murray-Osborne ’22: 2 goals, 2 assists
Jasper Bennett ’21: 1 goal
Albert Barber ’21: 1 goal
Alex Elrington ’21: 2 assists
Burak Yanar ’24: 19 saves
We arrived with a spartan crew and faced a surprisingly boisterous crowd for a Wednesday night game. Despite the tough conditions, we were able to take charge of the first quarter with three faceoff wins from Jack Whelan ’23, outstanding defense from Peter Coors ’21, James Marin ’21, and Kristian Scurtis ’21, and several key ground balls from Albert Barber. We struck early with a beautiful feed from Xander to Jasper, who buried the ball with authority. Alex connected with Harry for a one-touch finish a few minutes later. The real story of the first quarter, though, was freshman Burak Yanar who saved all six of the shots he faced – simply incredible.
The Dons started to chip away in the 2nd quarter, capitalizing on broken clears, and eventually tied the game at 3-3 with 4 minutes in the half. Unfortunately, we lost captain James Marin to a shoulder injury, rattling our already short-handed defense. Our attack unit came up big to close the quarter, though, controlling the ball smartly and adding two more for us to enter halftime up 5-4. The final play was especially impressive as Albert saved a ball just before it bounced out of bounds, zipped the ball across the field to Harry who swung it to Xander for a ripper of a shot just as the clock wound down.
Things started well in the 3rd with Harry adding two more goals in the first 4 minutes, but SB kept chasing. Our depleted midfield showed some wear and we had trouble protecting the middle of the field. Suddenly we found ourselves down 7-9. We pushed through the exhaustion, found a way to execute the game plan, and controlled possession straight through the end of the quarter. Alex strung a beautiful pass through the defense to Harry with 1:00 minute on the clock and then Xander took a faceoff straight to goal 20 seconds later to send us into the 4th quarter tied 9-9.
A broken clear, a missed slide, and an unfortunate penalty landed us down 12-10 with five minutes to play. Exhausted as we were, the rams still mounted a furious charge to close the game, and might well have tied things up had a few more bounces or 50-50 calls gone our way. No one backed down, no one made excuses, we battled through the last whistle.
The coaches couldn’t be more impressed by the effort from this group today. We hustled for each other all over the field. The attack was relentless on rides. Middies sprinted hard to the hole on defense. Our defenders pressed way out to harass SB’s best ball handlers. Guys ran through double teams in transition, chased down shots, and were still battling for ground balls right up to the final whistle. Those are the little things that are hard to do even when fresh and were all that much more impressive given our collective lack of sleep and our short-staffed bench. Scurtis, Coors, and Ned Sigler ’21 ran the whole game on defense without a break and were still sprinting through the finish. The midfield group of Albert, Oscar Livingston ’23, Wade Nieman ’23, Charlie Patel ’23, and Elliot Murray-Osborne ’24 gave us the kind of energy we might expect from a 10-12 person rotation.
This was a day we wished we could have played at home in front of a friendly crowd. But, despite the sting of the loss, I can say confidently that you all would have been proud of how the boys in blue represented the school. We’ll be on the road again Friday night but are looking forward to closing out the season with two games on the Mesa next week.