Boys lacrosse: Community School vanquishes Canterbury to win the Class A-District 12 title
The Seahawks started fast and finished furiously.
Community School played like a team with plenty of motivation to defeat Canterbury for the first time since 2015, dismantling the Cougars 13-6 to win the Class A-District 12 title on Friday night.
“This is what these guys have worked for the whole year,” Seahawks head coach Keith Lee said. “This team continues to get better week after week. We’re young, and watching the growth from the first week of the season to now has been awesome.”
The Seahawks were quick off the mark, getting out to a 6-1 lead in the first 15 minutes of the contest. The Cougars were able to get within three goals at halftime, but, time and time again, the Seahawk defense was able to hold off potential Canterbury charges and give their offense opportunities.
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"They came out focused," Lee said. "They came out ready to play. I think that the kids battled. We knew that there’d be runs for both teams, and we were able to kind of slow down their runs and then keep ours going."
At the start of the fourth quarter, Canterbury midfielder Sean Mahoney scored to cut the Seahawk lead to 8-5. The Seahawks responded with a flurry of five goals that put the game out of reach.
“The whole night our defense was allowing our offense to figure out what they were doing,” Lee said. “Offensively, putting up 13 against that defense is really strong for us and we’re really happy with it, but more impressively (was) our defense holding them to what they did.”
Senior midfielder Yates Miller led the Seahawks with four goals and two assists, consistently causing problems for the Cougars.
“It was electric,” Miller said. “Having the boys just score and score like that on a team that we haven’t beat before – that was just amazing. We could not be more excited right now.”
Community School juniors Chase Atterbury and Ramsey Huggins each had hat tricks in the victory, while eighth-grade goaltender Michael Slusar recorded four saves. The Seahawk defense held the Cougars to half their scoring average for the season.
Mahoney and Spencer Thompson scored two goals each for Canterbury.
“They played a great game,” junior Seahawk midfielder Krish Sharma said. “They worked hard. We just came out firing like we said we would all week.”
Canterbury head coach Trent Carter gave credit to the Seahawks.
“They came out, they’re well coached, they played a great game,” he said. “We made a lot of mistakes earlier, we thought we could come back from them, and we didn’t. Hat’s off to them. They’re doing great things.”
With brackets for regionals slated to come out on Saturday, Carter said the team will “wait and see” about a potential at-large bid.
The Seahawks are focused on getting better each week, hoping to extend their season with an eye toward states, according to Lee.
But winning districts against a longtime foe? That was a solid first step.
“Coming from last year, on this field, losing to that team, it hurt,” Miller said. “We knew we had to just work and work and work, and it paid off. We took the W tonight, and we couldn’t be happier.”
Follow News-Press Sports Reporter Dustin Levy on Twitter: @DustinBLevy. For additional coverage of sports across Southwest Florida, follow @newspresssports and @ndnprepzone on Instagram.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Boys lacrosse: Community School vanquishes Canterbury to win district
