Dating back to the first days of tryouts, BC High boys lacrosse coach Marcus Craigwell has attempted to instill a team mentality. A mindset, where it is all or nothing for the Eagles. Falling short of a Div. 1 state championship once again was not going to be accepted.
A lofty goal? Sure, yet with each passing day, they are becoming closer and closer to making it a reality.
Will Emsing (hat trick, two assists) and Patrick Maroney (hat trick, assist) led the attack, while Cooper Chapman (two goals, three assists) also had a banner afternoon as second-seeded BC High punched its ticket to the state semifinals for a third straight season with a convincing 14-5 victory over No. 7 Xaverian.
The score appear lopsided, but this game was essentially a tale of two chapters. For the entirety of the first quarter, the two Catholic Conference foes traded swings, with BC High (18-2) taking a 5-4 lead into the second.
With 8:44 to play in the half, Xaverian (12-7) turned in arguably one of the plays of the year as freshman midfielder Jake Fraga corralled a loose ball. In doing so, he lost his balance, and lobbed an over-the-shoulder pass to Dante Mariani out of desperation. The junior attackman somehow hauled it in, and sniped the cage in one underhanded motion. Suddenly, the Hawks’ sideline was exploding, and their fans erupted into pandemonium as they cut it to a 6-5 game.
“I told our guys that they were going to play with desperation,” said Craigwell. “They’re going to do stuff that they’ve never done before. They were going to tap into a different type of energy. We were prepared for it, right? They gave us a really good first quarter. We weren’t winning many faceoffs. We just needed to rely on what we know. Just play our game. Just figure it out through the pace, through the chaos. We did that in the second quarter, and we didn’t let up.”
Some teams might wilt following such a sequence. Instead, the Eagles responded with authority.
Georgetown commit James Carroll proceeded to find the net, only to have Maroney net his second goal 1:01 later, giving BC High an 8-5 advantage with 7:29 to play in the second quarter.
“We trusted each other,” Carroll said. “That was our mindset going in. We knew that was kind of a lucky goal. This was our third time playing them, we know what they have. We kind of felt that was all they had after that first quarter. So we trusted each other throughout the rest of the game.”
Emsing and Brody Rice later added a pair of tallies in the closing minutes of the frame, as the Eagles constructed a 10-5 lead by intermission. The momentum carried on into the third, as Emsing and Maroney each completed their respective hat tricks with a goal apiece, and BC High cruised from there, netting eight unanswered tallies.
Cole Jette paced Xaverian with two goals.
Last season, Carroll was forced to miss the Eagles’ Div. 1 state championship bout with St. John’s Prep after sustaining a lacerated kidney and spleen during a game with Acton-Boxboro in the Round of 8. The following few months were a journey back to recovery. Now, he and his teammates will look to return to the title game by knocking off the very same opponent.
“You never know when it’s going to be your last time playing,” said Carroll. “You never know if one hit is going to take you out. So I think it’s just about keeping that mentality, about going as hard as possible. Especially today … this is my sixth year here on this field, and this is the last game. We wanted to leave everything out on Cotter Field today. I think we did that.”