Dover's Dom Chalifour reaches 700 career saves, sets New Hampshire boys lacrosse record

DOVER – His team needed a goaltender one day, so Dom Chalifour volunteered.

“I liked scoring goals before, but I stepped in and had a ton of fun with it,” he said. “I was pretty good at it and just kept going with it from there.”

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No one could have predicted what that selfless gesture would lead to more than a decade later.

Now a senior goalie and co-captain on the Dover High School boys lacrosse team, Chalifour broke the state record for most saves in a career late Wednesday afternoon in a game against Bedford at Bellamy Field.

“To me it’s a milestone,” he said. “I’m so happy and grateful for everybody who helped me get here. It’s just something I can feel good about.”

He reached the milestone late in the second quarter of the Green Wave’s eventual 19-6 loss to the Bulldogs in a Division I matchup, touching off a brief celebration that marked the occasion of his 700th career save.

“To have somebody accomplish a goal like that is a pretty wild feat to watch,” said first-year Dover coach Chris Ketcham. “Obviously, a bunch of kids came to watch him get it. We knew this was going to be the game, probably. It was great.”

Chalifour finished with 22 saves Wednesday, giving him 713 for his career. According to Ketcham, he needed nine saves going into the game to eclipse the old mark of 699 held by Pinkerton Academy’s Matt Johnson.

Chalifour is one of two Dover goalies in the top five, the other being Kent Willis who graduated in 2006 with 660 and ranks fourth all time. Derryfield’s Neil Donnelly is third with 676 and Avry Truex, also of Derryfield, is fifth with 517.

“I knew coming into the game that I was close, but I wasn’t really paying attention to how far away I was,” said Chalifour, who made second team all-state in Division I last season. “I didn’t know until I saved and picked up the ball and I heard (teammate) Micah (Krick) yelling, ‘That was the one,’ and the timeout and everything happened.”

The big save came when Chalifour stopped a point-blank, one-on-one bid.

“It was kind of an in-tight shot,” he said. “I didn’t really see it too well. It just hit the center of my chest. Not a pretty save, but it was a save.”

"The save he made was right on the doorstep," Ketcham said.

Senior defender Jackson Bairstow, who has known Chalifour since middle school, describes Chalifour’s game as “pretty gritty, pretty angry.”

“There are times like if he gets hit or toppled off he’s not one to back down,” Bairstow said. “He’s going to come back firing. He plays with so much heart. He’s always been that way.”

“When I get hot, like making a few saves in a row, it kind of gives me an irrational confidence like the more I save the more I feel like I’m going to save, every shot the quicker I feel,” Chalifour said.

He sets an example for his teammates.

“If we’re in a huddle or even on the field, if he makes a bunch of saves that brings the entire group up and that gets us all hyped up for the next one,” Bairstow said. That’s on the field and then off the field he’s a really good leader like in the locker room. I’ve learned a lot from him in terms of being a captain and being a leader.”

“I’m trying my best to help everybody get better every day,” Chalifour said. “I want to prepare myself every day and I want to bring up everybody around me.”

He’s also been a mentor for backup goalie Zack Grigg, now a junior.

“Dom honestly is just a leader on and off the field,” he said. “He’s evolved me as a goalie and gotten me so much better. He makes me look at the game much different.”

Chalifour was averaging close to 15 saves per game entering Wednesday’s contest against Bedford, one of the top teams in Division I. He originally took up the game as a youngster at the urging of former Dover High and St. Thomas Aquinas coach Sean Houlahan, a neighbor.

“I fell in love with the pressure,” Chalifour said of playing goal. “Every play and every time they’re on an offensive possession you have a chance to change the game and get it going your way.”

But he struggled to develop a short memory.

“That was actually one of the hardest things for me all the way through, just moving on to the next one because I always think I should be able to save every shot,” Chalifour said. “I had to get it through my head that some are going to go in. There’s nothing I can do about it, just be better for the next shot and be better going forward.”

Chalifour, who is listed at 5 feet, 8 inches and 150 pounds, has committed to play college lacrosse at UMass-Boston, a Division III program.

“That was the best of both worlds for me,” he said, “because the engineering program there is great.”

Although Ketcham had seen Chalifour play in the past, he’s coaching him for the first time.

“He’s actually gotten mentally tougher in the year that I’ve been with him,” Ketcham said. “As he goes and plays in college that mental game is even more important. Dom’s such an aggressive goalie he’ll start making poor decisions if he’s not mentally checked in, but everything I’ve seen from him in the last year, it’s just right decisions all the time. You can’t ask for more than that.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Dover senior Chalifour sets New Hampshire boys lacrosse saves record