BOYS LACROSSE: GLENGELG HOLDS OFF CENTENNIAL, 7-6

 by Lem Satterfield

(See video highlights and interviews below)

Tyler Burford sat alone in the Glenelg locker room after his Gladiators had narrowly escaped Friday night's Howard County League clash with a 7-6 victory over visiting Centennial.

In Burford's mind, the game had been similar to that on April 5 against Archbishop Spalding of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association's A Conference, when the Gladiators required an overtime goal by Chris Gostchall to secure a 9-8 win.

"Spalding, definitely," said Burford, responding to which contest had most prepared his Gladiators -- winners of last year's Class 3A-2A state title -- for the talented Eagles' squad.

"They [Spalding] went up ahead by two, and at the last minute, we came back and put two in," Burford said. "And in double-overtime, it was just us working as hard as we could to put the ball in, and it paid off. That was just like the game tonight. Our defense broke down a couple of times, but we stayed alive and that's all that matters."

Burford scored twice and assisted on two more goals, Ryan Dougherty scored three times, Josh Braun scored twice, and goalie Jon Selfridge came through with a variety of clutch saves as the Gladiators, ranked 13th in the DigitalSports Top 20, improved their record to 6-0 against Howard County, and to 8-0 overall.

The Gladiators had to overcome two excellent efforts by junior attackmen Harrison Chaires and Shane Jaeger of the Eagles (5-1, 6-3), who combined for five goals and three assists.

"They have a really balanced team, and I expected them to keep fighting. With a coaching staff like that, along with their players and the tradition of that school, they're going to fight the whole game," said Glenelg coach Josh Hatmaker.

"We were up, but we had a couple of broken situations where they made great plays. They played fast. And that's what we stressed to our kids all of the time, and we just got caught," said Hatmaker.

"That Chaires kid, he's incredible. He got them back into the game, him and Jaeger," Hatmaker said. "We were able to put on two more [goals,] and that was good. They're very balanced. You had two, very balanced teams, and that was why the score was so close."

While Burford's star attackman teammate, Gotschall, was being shadowed, step-for-step, by the Eagles' defender, Tsubasa Matsui, it was clear that the Gladiators had to find other ways to vanquish their rivals.

"Our defense was playing great, but we were just letting them down, making too many turnovers and they were getting tired," said Dougherty, who, with keyed a midfield unit that held an edge in faceoffs, 9-8, over the Eagles Simon Seo.

"[Seo] was beating us on pretty much every one. I'm not sure who he is, but he's a heckuva faceoff guy," Dougherty said. "I know he could have had fastbreaks all day if he wanted to, but luckily, we put Scott Wheeler on him, and he anticipated where he was going and played good defense on him."

"Definitely just working hard and busting to get every ground ball that we could. Our defense, primarily, and [Goalie] Jon [Selfridge,] they saved us so many times," said Burford, who scored the Gladiators first goal for a 1-0 lead, as well as their seventh to complete a three-goal run that had his team ahead, 7-4, with 2:19 to play.

"Just moving fast on offense, moving the ball around," said Burford, who also had ssists on two other goals. "Drawing the double-team and getting the ball to the open man, getting a shot off -- that's pretty much it."

The Eagles tied the game for the first of two times at 1-1 when versatile Harrison Chaires (two goals, two assists) buried a shot by Shane Jaeger (three, one), but Burford responded by feeding Ryan Doughterty (three goals) for a 2-1 lead at 10:53 of the second quarter as the Gladiators sparked a three-goal run of their own to go up, 4-1, at 11:42 of the third quarter.

Selfridge came up with a number of critical saves in the third quarter, with one of them being a kick saves.

"They have a lot of offensive threats. They have Chaires, they have Jaeger, but we have a lot of athletes on defense who can really help us out. We came in with a gameplan, stuck to it, pressured them, and made them react to the defense, and that kind of set the tone early," said Selfridge, who, at one point, thwarted Chaires, one-on-one, by cradling his shot in the fourth quarter.

"We had Mike McCabe on Chaires, Kyle Hofstetter on Shane Jaeger and those are their two, biggest assetts on offense," Selfridge said. "They did a great job. We watched a lot of film on them, we knew their tendancies and we stepped it up."

Eagles' coach Mike Siegert praised his teams effort, in general, and those of Chaires, Jaeger and Seo, in particular.

"I thought our middies did a pretty good job of slowing down their break. We were really afraid of them pushing the ball up the field. We know they really like to do that, and we were able to slow neutralize that somewhat," Siegert said.

"But we gave them some scramble situations down inside where we couldn't come up with the loose ball, and a good team like Glenelg is going to capitalize on that," said Siegert. "They hurt us a couple of times on cuts where we just didnt' get the switch that we needed. And a good team capitalizes on that and we ended up coming up one goal short."

Asked if he thought the Gladiators had the game in hand when they had a four-goal lead,  Burford said, "At times you want to think that, but you know that you can't just because it's Centennial."

"They're gonna come back, and they're gonna play you a good game, and they proved that," said Burford, who watched the Eagles storm back to tie the game at 4-4 as Chaires fed Jaeger with 4:32 left to play.

"Especially when we were up, 7-4, and they came back to make it 7-6," said Burford, referring Chaires' unassisted score that trimmed the Eagles' deficit to the final margin with 63 seconds left to play. "That's definitely scary, but we were able to pull it out and win the game."


Glenelg 7,  Centennial 6

Goals: C- Jaeger 3, Chaires 2, Danner. G- Dougherty 3, Burford 2, Braun 2. Assists: C- Chaires 2, Jaeger. G- Burford 2, Castro, Wynne, Gotschall. Saves: C- Suhstedt 9. G- Selfridge 16.

Half: 3-1, G