West Islip’s road to a 10th consecutive Suffolk County title may be a bit longer this year, but the Lions on Thursday served notice that they will not go quietly.
In opening this year’s lacrosse playoffs, fifth seeded West Islip rolled over No. 12 Lindenhurst 14-3 at West Islip High School. The Lions jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the first quarter and never looked back.
“This was our last home game this year and the team had a great attitude and did a great job on ground balls in the first quarter,” said Scott Craig, West Islip’s head coach.
West Islip controlled the first half as goals by Mike Moynihan and Matt McCallan 36 seconds apart gave the Lions an early 2-0 lead. Lindenhurst would respond 16 seconds after McCallan’s goal as the Bulldogs Dan Alazraki scored on a nifty one-handed jump shot to cut the lead to 2-1.
But the Lions would respond in a big way scoring the game’s next 11 goals to take a 13-1 lead at the half. The offensive barrage by West Islip was lead by senior Matt McCallan (4 goals, 1 assist), junior Mike Moynihan (3 goals, 1 assist) and freshman Connor Smith (3 goals, 1 assist).
For Lindenhurst, Alazraki accounted for the Bulldogs’ 3 goals and Mike Renick had 2 assists.
Up next for West Islip is No. 4 Smithtown East next Tuesday at 5 p.m. The Bulls, which beat Riverhead 12-5 on Thursday, handed West Islip one of its five losses this year, 13-6 on April 9.
“We struggled at the faceoff X and with groundballs against Smithtown East during the regular season,” Craig said. “We will need to do the things we did well in the first half (against Lindenhurst) again when we play Smithtown.”
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