Calvert boys doubled up in SMAC all-star lacrosse game

Friday, June 2, 2006

St. Mary’s finished their careers on a solid note by defeating Calvert County, 18-9, in the first SMAC Senior All-Star Classic last Friday evening at Leonardtown High School’s Raider Stadium.

After scoring just twice in the first quarter, St. Mary’s found the net quickly and often over the final three periods en route to the convincing victory.

‘‘Started out pretty slow, but [we] got our stuff together and just made good transition decisions,” said attacker Eric Beasley (Great Mills), who led all goal-scorers with five and was the Most Valuable Player for St. Mary’s. ‘‘That’s really what won the game.”

Beasley teamed up with midfielder Michael Hofmeister, his Great Mills teammate, twice in the third quarter to put any chance of Calvert comeback seemingly out of reach.

‘‘Me and Hof, we’ve worked together since youth league,” Beasley said. ‘‘We’ve been playing together and we’ve always worked together really well. It shows that we like communicate without speaking on the field.”

Midfielder Nick Fleshman (Chopticon) had five points as well on two goals and three assists.

‘‘I was just trying to get other people points,” Fleshman said. ‘‘I did my stuff during the season, so this is for everybody else.”

Attacker Vince Pontorno (Leonardtown) and midfielder Trent Chisholm (Leonardtown) each recorded hat tricks.

‘‘All through youth league, we’ve all played with each other, so it’s been good times,” Pontorno said.

Even defenders got an opportunity to do something they normally don’t get to do — score. Matt Sanders (Leonardtown) played attack and had two goals, while Lucas Hammett (Leonardtown) scored once and Will Yeo (Great Mills) ended the game with a tally.

‘‘We took our rivalries from around the county and then we meshed together in practice and formed a good bond,” Chisholm said.

Calvert enjoyed an early lead, but the game slipped away in the second half.

‘‘We never really had the ball on offense,” said attacker Ben Thompson (Northern), who led Calvert with four goals and picked up the team’s Most Valuable Player honors. ‘‘They kind of controlled it.”

Pontorno, who suffered an injury two minutes earlier, scored the first goal of either team with 5 minutes 4 seconds left in the first quarter.

Thompson scored twice in 50 seconds late in the period to give Calvert the lead, 2-1.

‘‘I just kind of went out there and had fun,” Thompson said. ‘‘We had some Northern guys on the team that I was kind of hooking up with.”

While killing a penalty, St. Mary’s tied the game. Fleshman tucked the ball low past Calvert goalie Ira Stavely (Huntingtown) with 1:06 remaining to make it a 2-all game.

Midfielder Marc DiMichelle (Northern) answered at the other end with 39.5 seconds to go and Calvert led 3-2 after one quarter.

Beasley knotted the game up off a Sanders pass and Fleshman scored from Chisholm to give St. Mary’s a lead it would not relinquish. Beasley added a goal 22 seconds after Fleshman’s tally and St. Mary’s led 5-3 with 9:09 left until halftime.

Hammett intercepted a Calvert pass and scored midway through the quarter, making it 6-3.

Calvert had been without a goal in over eight minutes when midfielder David Taylor (Northern) beat St. Mary’s goalie Allen Frere (Great Mills) to come back to within two with 4:34 remaining. But 20 seconds later, Chisholm scored from long range to make it 7-4.

‘‘It was all about my teammates,” Chisholm said. ‘‘They got the looks; I got it and I just did what I needed to do.”

Hofmeister netted an empty-net goal with 1:42 to go. Stavely lost the handle of the ball while running upfield and Hofmeister fired the ball into the empty goal. St. Mary’s went to halftime up 8-4.

Beasley scored three times in the first 5:10 of the third, the last as he beat Stavely on a one-on-one to make it 11-4 with 6:50 left. Beasley admitted that he maybe should have had more than five goals.

‘‘Started off pretty bad, forcing the ball, trying to get that shot,” Beasley said. ‘‘Once I started relaxing, started moving the ball around, stuff started happening and we were open.”

Thompson beat Frere to break Calvert’s streak of over 10 minutes without a goal.

E-mail Paul Watson at pwatson@somdnews.com.