Improved Huntingtown boys bow out to Bennett

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Sixth-seeded Bennett (6-8) squared off against second-seeded Stephen Decatur in the semifinal round Monday. Top-seeded Northern hosted Kent Island in the other semifinal game.

The Clippers trailed 5-3 at halftime but poured in eight straight goals, four each in the third and fourth quarters. Andrew Lawton started the offensive barrage when he scored on Huntingtown goalie Matt Deacon just 14 seconds into the period. Lawton added another goal off a screen shot just more than a minute later and the Clippers were off.

‘‘It’s not so much what we started to do compared to what we weren’t doing in the first half, which was to play our game,” Bennett coach Milt Rodriguez said. ‘‘In the second half, I saw the same team that beat four or five teams on the Eastern Shore.”

‘‘Legitimately I don’t think that team is better than we are, it’s just that when you have young guys [on your roster] it’s going to be hot and cold and unfortunately today we were cold,” Huntingtown coach Vic Goeller said. ‘‘We never got a chance to settle the ball. Once we got down by a little bit I think they tried to press the ball instead of just relaxing and playing our offense.

‘‘When we did score it was because we settled down on offense. We just never got in rhythm.”

But the third-seeded Hurricanes (9-6) seemed to be in rhythm for much of the regular season. Huntingtown, which picked up four wins in its inaugural season last year, won four of its first six games of the year and won five of its last six to finish third in the conference. Among its wins this season was a 9-5 victory over eventual SMAC champion Leonardtown on March 28, the only regular season setback by the Raiders in the last two years.

‘‘For a young team I think we made a lot of great strides,” said Goeller, who had three seniors on the team, ‘‘so our goal for next year will be to continue building. It’s frustrating [to lose in the first round] but we’re only losing three defensemen and the whole entire offense comes back next year so hopefully we can keep building.”

‘‘We did a lot better this year than last year, but for me at least, it wasn’t enough,” said sophomore David Rice, who won 12 of 19 faceoffs against the Clippers. ‘‘We moved up [in the standings from fifth last year to third] but we need to keep going next year. It’s so disappointing, especially for our seniors because we thought we could contend in the regionals and now we can’t.”

Huntingtown’s offense struggled early on, as it misfired often, many times from point-blank range. Given an early reprieve, the Clippers took advantage and pulled out to a 3-1 lead early in the second quarter.

But Huntingtown came back with four straight goals, two by Curtis Wright, to head into halftime with a 5-3 lead.

But even with a two-goal lead, Goeller wasn’t pleased at the break.

‘‘I wasn’t really happy [heading to halftime] because we had a lot of one-on-ones with the goalie,” he said. ‘‘I thought we should have been up by more than two but it’s been the same story in every game we’ve lost this year.

‘‘We’ve lost six games now and in every one of them except the last Northern game [a 9-5 loss May 5] we’ve been flat. Our first quarters have been very weak.”

‘‘We missed a lot of goals by missing the goal and shooting it right at the goalie,” said Huntingtown’s Kelsey Baier-Anderson, who had two goals. ‘‘I missed a few also [early in the game] and I take it pretty personally upon myself because that could have been the game right there.”

E-mail Michael Reid at mreid@somdnews.com.