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Langley booked passage to the Liberty District boys' lacrosse play-off final later this week with a methodical 15-5 win against an over-matched Thomas Jefferson squad in a soggy semifinal onTuesday.
Now gone from district competition, the Colonials (4-7 overall) still have lacrosse on their schedule by virtue of having qualified, as have the Saxons, for Northern Region tournament, which begins on May 12. But Langley (13-1) still has Liberty District final foe Madison to think about before turning its attention to regional playoff action.
Like several games earlier this season, Saxon goal production proved to be a group effort, with 11 players contributing in the most recent episode hosted by Langley.
Leading scorer Alex Devlin picked up four goals while middie Joey Byrne delivered a pair. Attackers Sean Ahearn, Ethan Bailey, Jack Lundeen, Kyle Maida and Ryan Ningard had one a piece, as did middies Bryan Clubb, Matt Cronin, Jeremy Kuney and Bret Simone.
For Thomas Jefferson, it was attackmen Liam Carter-Condon and Collin Hennegan and middies Andy Doyne, Andrew Palmer and Ryan Vaughn who were the goal providers.
The Colonials started the brighter side in the wet conditions, and made the most of the game's first clear possession when Carter-Condon slipped past the Saxon defense to open the scoring with less than a minute gone from the clock. Devlin tied matters less than two minutes later off of a pass from Byrne, who had a total of four assists for the evening to go with his two goals.
Maida was the beneficiary of furtive action from fellow attacker Bailey on Colonials' goalie Mike LeGore that resulted in the home team taking the lead. Bailey's stick check on LeGore's stick from behind the goalie dislodged the ball just as the netminder had cleared his crease area to start a clear attempt. The Saxon attacker promptly scooped up the loose ball and supplied it to a wide-open Maida, who made no mistake in the finish to grab a lead that the hosts never relinquished.
Devlin then got his second of the game, a shorthanded strike that made the score 3-1, but not before LeGore came up big with several saves, including three point-blank stops on Ningard and Lundeen to keep the visitors in contention during the early stages.
Vaughn replied for the Colonials at the 2 minute, 18 second mark of the first quarter to make it 3-2 and announce that his side still harbored ambitions to stay in the hunt despite Langley enjoying a growing share of ball possession. The Saxons' two-goal lead was restored, however, when Bailey flicked in after a double head-fake maneuver put him one-on-one against LeGore during a man-advantage situation for Langley with only :15 remaining in the opening quarter.
This fourth Saxon goal turned out to be the first of an 11-goal run through the heart of the proceedings that shifted heavily in favor of the hosts. Kuney had an attempt blocked by LeGore in the first minute of the second stanza, but the Langley middie came back 25 seconds later to put one through into goal off of a Byrne assist to stake his side to a 5-2 lead.
Lundeen finally solved the Thomas Jefferson goalie just past the midway point of the second quarter. Before the first half was complete, Devlin finished a hat-trick -- again, Byrne with an assist -- and then Byrne produced the first of his two scores for the game, to give Langley an 8-2 lead at half time.
Byrne came through with his second goal of the contest just on the other side of half time, which served notice to the visitors that Langley was determined to stick to task through the third quarter, a game stage that in some recent outings has been less than decisive for the Saxons.
A Cronin goal less than a minute later surely removed any doubt about the home team's intentions. The Langley middie, who already had been sternly enforcing the center spot in face-offs to the Saxons' benefit, was finisher on a transition goal with final set-up coming by way of a delicate pass from Langley defender Tom Robinson that found Cronin in good position to work the goalie with little interference from Colonial defenders.
LeGore displayed some heroic cage-work for the Thomas Jefferson cause a couple minutes later when he denied Lundeen with a point-blank stop for the fourth time in the contest. In this instance the goalie used his leg to deny the Saxon attacker's bid to slip the ball in from close range, also likely keeping the senior goalie's name out of Lundeen's congratulations list for soon-to-be graduates.
Langley defending stifled what few offensive forays the Colonials could muster at this stage of the battle. Mainline defenders Robinson, Trevor Shafran and Brendan Dwyer, in addition to longpoles Joey Cortina, Kas Semancik and Robbie Bennett, took charge of the defensive and midfield zones in takeaways and groundball action.
The Saxons got their "team goal" of the night near the half-way point of the third quarter. This time it was Ningard furnishing the end product of a sustained passing sequence in attack that heavily involved the entire first-line offensive corps -- Bailey, Byrne, Devlin, Kuney and Lundeen, in addition to goal-scorer Ningard.
Simone then drilled in from 15 yards to get the score to 12-2 by the close of the third quarter.
Devlin produced his fourth goal of the game early in the final quarter, followed by an Ahearn strike with Langley in a man advantage situation. The freshman attacker snuck around from behind the cage to slip the ball inside the left post while Thomas Jefferson goalie Quasar Wei, who had replaced LeGore at the start of the fourth quarter, was leaning forward anticipating a pass from Ahearn to a Saxon cutter.
A bounce shot from Doyne found its way into the net to give the Colonials its third goal of the evening, but this was canceled out by another bounce shot goal supplied about a half minute later by Clubb, the third goal out of three attempts for the season from the Langley middie.
Hennegan and Palmer each picked up a goal for the visitors late in the final quarter to close out the score-line at 15-5 for the playoff battle.
