CAPE ELIZABETH — All Cape Elizabeth boys’ lacrosse Coach Ben Raymond wanted was for his team to play better in the second half Friday night.

The Capers did even better than that.

Recovering from an early five-goal deficit, Cape scored nine goals during the final 24 minutes to rally to a 10-7 win against previously unbeaten Yarmouth in a Class B boys’ lacrosse game.

“It’s not necessarily what the score is at the end of the game, but that you have a second half you can be proud of,” said Raymond, recalling what he told his team after it fell behind 6-1 during the first half. “We just wanted to play well.”

Cape dominated play during the second half to hand the Clippers, the two-time defending Class B champions, their first regular-season loss in more than two years.

“I think they came out with a different intensity and emotion in the second half, and my hat’s off to them,” said Yarmouth Coach Craig Curry. “We’ll go back and look at all the things we learned here tonight and make ourselves better.”

The Capers won all 11 draws during the second half, which enabled them to regain possession after each of their goals.

“Every one of those faceoffs is another possession, and that’s huge for us when we’re trying to get back into the game,” Raymond said. “The second half we really just executed a little bit better. In the first half, we really had no possession. We threw the ball away quite a bit.”

During the second half, Timmy Takach, a junior midfielder, and Ben Brewster, a senior defender, teamed up to dominate the face-offs for the Capers.

“Timmy won all the draws, and Ben picked up all the balls,” Raymond said.

“It’s just a lot of hard work,” said Takach, who also scored three goals. “I’ve got the best long-stick middie in the state, Ben Brewster. He’s unbelievable at getting ground balls. As long as I can get the ball near him, he’ll get it.”

The top-ranked team in Eastern Class B, Yarmouth (11-1) looked like it was going to roll over the Capers in the first half.

“They came out and pressured us, and we weren’t really expecting as much pressure as we got,” Raymond said. “We adjusted to that in the second half. We made it really important to possess the ball. We weren’t really concerned with going to goal right away, but we needed to possess the ball.”

As a result, Cape held a 20-6 edge in shots in the second half.

Tom Foden led the 8-3 Capers, the second-ranked team in Western Class B, with three goals and an assist. Timmy Lavallee, Wes Richards, Wilson Laprade and Teddy Smith each scored a goal. Harper Nelson had two assists.

Evan Henry scored two goals for the Clippers. Steve Petrovek, Matt Murphy, Kyle Groves, Mike Johnson and David Dietz each scored a goal.

 

Staff Writer Paul Betit can be contacted at 791-6424 or at:

pbetit@pressherald.com