PARIS — It wasn’t the prettiest win of the season, but the Oak Hill/Lisbon/Monmouth Raiders remained undefeated with an 11-8 victory over the Oxford Hills Vikings in a boys lacrosse contest on Tuesday.

After a dominant second quarter by Oak Hill, Oxford Hills controlled the second half by outscoring the Raiders 5-3.

“Oxford Hills wanted it today, we got lucky and pulled it out,” Raiders coach Joey Hinkley said.

For the Vikings (6-4), the loss snapped a five-game winning streak.

“There’s a lot of positives. The huge thing is having the guys not looking at the other teams, especially Heal points and things like that,” Oxford Hills coach Hunter Rowell said. “I think that got away from us. I think they got in our heads. We have been working really hard not to (get other teams) in our heads this season — we came back at the end there, but it was too little too late.”

Tiger Hopkins led the way with four goals and an assist while Xavier Michaud had three goals and four assists in the victory.

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“We are not about the (individual) stats, it’s a team effort,” Michaud said.

Thomas Bancroft had three goals for the Vikings while Zavier Balzano and Jacob Lang each had two goals.

It was all Raiders (10-0) in the first quarter, as Hopkins opened the scoring in the first minute. Michaud scored the next two goals to give Oak Hill a 3-0 lead by the midway point of the opening quarter. The score remained 3-0 for the remainder of the first quarter.

“They did really well in the first quarter and the second quarter, then all of a sudden they fell off,” Hinkley said of Hopkins and Michaud. “They thought they had it in the bag. That’s not the way we play and coach.”

Oxford Hills cut the deficit to one in the opening minute of the second quarter as Bancroft and Blaine Cyr found the back of the net.

Michaud responded to give Oak Hill a 4-2 lead followed by Noah Moring, who stretched the lead to 5-2. Hopkins put the Raiders up 6-2.

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Balzano stopped the run for Oak Hill as he got the Vikings’ third goal of the contest.

Michaud assisted on the next two Raiders goals as Gabe Bergeron and Hopkins found the back of the net and Oak Hill went into halftime with an 8-3 lead.

“I said the game isn’t over until the last whistle,” Rowell said of his halftime message. “We have been working on that positive atmosphere the past five years. We got to play our own game, and at that point we weren’t playing our own game, we were playing Oak Hill’s game.”

The lead stretched to 10-3 five minutes into the third quarter as Moring and Bergeron potted goals. Hopkins assisted on Moring’s goal while Michaud set up Bergeron.

Oxford Hills started to chip away at the deficit as Bancroft and attacker Jacob Lang scored late in the third quarter.

That sparked the Raiders to call a timeout.

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Backup goalie Nathan Plourde was also keeping his team in striking distance, as he made four of his seven saves in the third quarter. He came into the game for Parker Lessard in the first quarter.

“We had a couple different plans for this game and obviously the way we wanted it to go,” Rowell said of putting in Plourde for Lessard. “(Plourde) really stepped up today and did what he had to do. A couple times it felt like he was making saves on top of his head.”

Hopkins scored early in the fourth quarter to put the Raiders up 11-5.

Oxford Hills went on a run in the middle of the fourth quarter as Balzano, Bancroft and Lang all scored to cut the deficit to 11-8.

The Vikings missed on a 90-second man-up chance.

Rowell said they have worked on man-up situations in practice and have done well in practice in those situations.

Raiders goalie Brandon Glover made five of his ten saves in the final quarter.

“He was definitely the man of the game, he kept us in the game the whole time,” Hinkley said.


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