Panthers Cruise to a Home Victory Against Fox Lane
For the Pleasantville boys’ lacrosse team, Saturday was a day of fun in the sun.
For the visiting Fox Lane Foxes, it was a day of sun minus the fun.
With Brian Reda scoring five goals, Declan McDermott four and both James Daniele and Jack Howe adding two, the Panthers rolled past the Foxes 16-2 in a game that quickly turned into a rout after the opening quarter.
“It was a bad second quarter,” said Fox Lane head coach Craig Henley, whose team was outscored 8-0 and walked off the field at halftime trailing 12-1. “That second quarter was inexcusable and we’ve got to get better.”
On the first truly warm afternoon of the spring season, the Panthers, now 6-0, stepped onto their home turf seeking to put their struggle at Somers two days earlier behind them. P’ville managed to win 10-7, but the teams were still tied at 6-6 late in the third quarter.
“That was a great perseverance type of game,” said Panthers coach Chris Kear. “Today we just wanted to come out and play a cleaner game and move the ball and find the open man. I felt like on Thursday at Somers we were taking hasty shots and we weren’t finding the most open guy for the best possible shot. So we talked about that in practice and I felt like today we really shared the ball a lot better.”
Against the Foxes, Pleasantville needed over three minutes to get on the scoreboard first. Reda, right of the cage, took a pass from McDermott and finished a fast break on the Panthers’ third possession of the game. But nearly midway through the opening period, Fox Lane was able to tie the contest as Dillon Morgan ran to his left and fired a lefty shot past the Panthers’ Jack Fitzgerald.
Unfortunately for the Foxes, the goal by Morgan would be their last for a while. Daniele gave the Panthers the lead for good with 4:52 left in the first quarter after getting a pass from Howe, then weaving his way through traffic. A takeaway by Cullen Dell set up a McDermott goal with 3:25 to go and a big save by Fitzgerald ignited another break that ended with a McDermott missile winding up in the back of the net for a 4-1 Panther lead with 2:37 remaining in the first quarter.
Despite losing four of six faceoffs, the Foxes had their chances in the first quarter. But they never recovered after the late blitz by Pleasantville. McDermott scored his third goal just 41 seconds into the second quarter with the Panthers a man up. Fitzgerald soon started another break with a sparkling save and Howe finished it on the right doorstep.
“Yeah, he had some fantastic saves and then he got the outlets out right on the money, on the guy’s stick,” said Kear about his reliable senior goalie. “And then pushed transition. So that was defense to offense. He really sparked us.”
The Panthers scored five more goals, three of them off the stick of Reda, over the final 5:19 of the second quarter to build a 12-1 cushion at halftime. At the break, the Fox coaches had little they could do but appeal to their players’ pride.
“Yeah, it’s a pride thing at that point,” said Henley. “I mean, it’s frustrating. We’ve been on this end in these type of games a while now with this same group of guys. And it’s not like they’re not motivated and they don’t work hard. So it gets frustrating. It’s bigger than lacrosse at that time. It’s pride. It’s representing your families and how you finish and stuff.
“We preach that and try to get ‘em up again,” he added, “and I think they responded and came out well in the third. But, by then, the second quarter did us in there.”
Pleasantville dominated possession for the first four minutes of the third quarter, but the Foxes finally ended the Panther 11-goal run when Jake Bazyk scored with 7:51 left in the period. Just 50 seconds later, though, P’ville’s Justin Lupo scored the first goal of his varsity career to restore the Panthers’ 11-goal margin.
Before the quarter ended, Howe provided his first goal of the game despite being knocked to the turf and McDermott added his fourth even though he wound up limping away once the ball sailed into the cage. Howe closed the day’s scoring when he sent a one-hopper into the right side of the net just 20 seconds into the fourth quarter.
Despite the lopsided outcome, Kear conceded that the presence of Fox Lane’s Syracuse-bound star, Matt Magnan, was a source of worry prior to the opening faceoff.
“We were very concerned about number 24,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure we contained him because we knew if we held him in check we would have a great chance to win. We held him to one assist, which is pretty good.”
With Magnan and the Foxes in their rear-view mirror, the Panthers now turn their attention to more challenges ahead.
“Still a lot of games left,” said Kear, “and we hit a huge, tough stretch coming up here. We’ve got Rye, John Jay, Shoreham-Wading River, Farmingdale, Bronxville. So we have some really, really tough games ahead of us and there’s no time to relax. We want to really keep on getting better.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
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