Chaminade Lax Beats SJB 11-4, Remain Unbeaten in CHSAA

The Chaminade Flyers claimed their seventh consecutive CHSAA win and remained unbeaten in conference play with an 11-4 victory over St. John the Baptist Cougars Thursday afternoon.

The Flyers started slow and the Cougars hung around well into the second quarter, twice cutting Chaminade's lead to one.  Tom O’Connor scored less than two minutes into the second to bring the Cougars to within 3-2, and Emmett O’Harra scored to cut the gap to 4-3.   But the Flyers closed out the first half with two goals of their own and never looked back.

“I thought we played hard and pressed a little bit but these St. John’s kids played great and forced us into some errors,” Chaminade head coach Jim Moran said. “Fortunately for us we were able to grab more ground balls than them so we had the ball more. Once we settled down we did some nice things.”

The Flyers used a balance attack – Matt Kavanagh, Shane Thornton and Sean Mahon each contributed two goals to lead the team. The Cougar offense was paced by O’Hara, who also scored twice.

Even though they allowed 11 goals, St. John’s head coach Larry Collins was still impressed with the way his defense played, particularly showing improvement from the beginning of the season.

“Our defense as a whole has come a long way from the beginning of the year,” Collins said. “Today was a different defensive effort than we had from the beginning of the year.” He was especially happy with the performance of his goaltender Joe Aufiero, who made 11 saves.

Collins also remarked that his team has made strides overall since its last game against Chaminade on March 29 when the Cougars were defeated 14-5.

“I think we’ve come a long way since the first time we played Chaminade,” he said. “The guys played really hard and with a lot of intensity and that’s really what we were looking for coming in to today. We’ve been improving all year and I think we took a couple of steps forward again today.”

The game counted just the same for the Flyers in the standings but has slightly less significance than their next game Saturday night against nationally ranked Manhasset.  Chaminade and Manhasset will face off in a memorial game in honor of  the late James Regan, a former Chaminade lacrosse star who grew up in Manhasset and lost his life as an Army ranger in Iraq.

“It’s a big game because it’s a game and memorial for one of our own,” Moran said. He was one of us and he died tragically in Iraq. He was a supreme player and a supreme solider.” The emotional matchup takes place at 7 P.M. at Manhasset high school.