Messalonskee’s Cooper LeClair and Mt. Blue’s Finley Ward battle for possession during the first half of a boys lacrosse game Monday in Farmington. Mike Mandell/Morning Sentinel
FARMINGTON — Even after a loss to one of the state’s top teams last week, the Messalonskee boys lacrosse took some positives from a fast, physical game.
Those positives manifested quickly in the team’s next contest — and by the time their opponents knew what hit them, the Eagles were already well on their way to victory.
Messalonskee scored the first nine goals Monday en route to a 15-7 road victory over Mt. Blue. The Eagles got six goals from Ryan Parent and three from Tyler Hansen to bounce back from a tough loss Thursday against top-ranked Yarmouth.
“We just came out firing,” said Messalonskee head coach Tom Sheridan. “(The loss against Yarmouth), it was some very high intensity and speed, and our kids kind of adapted to that, and today, they came out hot. We really moved the ball well.”
Parent opened the scoring for Messalonskee (6-2) with 10 minutes, 42 seconds remaining in the first quarter. The visitors went up 3-0 two minutes later as Hansen and Parent scored in a 17-second span.
After Cooper LeClair scored for Messalonskee midway through the period, Parent and Hansen found the net twice more as part of the Eagles’ dominant first period. Parent made it 9-0 with 10:23 left in the second before Finley Ward finally scored for Mt. Blue (5-3) 45 seconds later for the half’s final goal.
“After the last one, coming out here today and getting a win today was super important,” Hansen said. “(Yarmouth) is a good team, but we just really wanted to come out here today and bring it back.”
Parent and Matt Fulling scored with 10:01 and 6:46 left in the third quarter, respectively, to give Messalonskee its largest lead of the game at 11-1. Mt. Blue scored the two of the last three goals to end the third and the first two to begin the fourth to cut the deficit with 12-5 with 10:54 to play.
“Give Mt. Blue credit because they didn’t quit and definitely got rolling as we went along,” Sheridan said. “I think we tried some different things out there once we got that quick lead on them, and we found some things to work on to go out and get better.”
It took Messalonskee just over a minute to answer Mt. Blue’s fifth goal as Landon Stewart found the net with 9:48 left. Mason Willett added two goals for Mt. Blue to complement the two from Chase Ranger earlier in the period, but the Eagles responded on each occasion with tallies from Fulling and Stewart.
The game was Messalonskee’s first on grass this season. The Eagles had played four games on their Veterans Field turf and also played on the surface in road games at Yarmouth and Hampden Academy in the season opener against Brunswick at Bowdoin College.
“We’re not used to the grass, but we pushed through and got it done,” Parent said. “Groundballs are way different (on grass), and that was one thing that killed us today. Our groundballs were not good.”
The win was a Heal point-worthy one for Messalonskee, which gained separation from York, Mt. Blue and Freeport with the victory. The game also snapped a four-game winning streak for the Cougars, who lost for the first time since falling to Lewiston on April 19.
How did the Eagles get it? Well, denying Mt. Blue possession for much of the first quarter went a long way. That was the product of a senior who didn’t score, but created much of the possession that fueled the players who did.
“We got a lot of faceoff wins from Garrett Bell,” Parent said. “That was big-time; it kept us rolling.”
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