TOPSHAM

In the first possession of Thursday’s boys high school crossover lacrosse game between Mt. Ararat and Freeport, the host Eagles whipped the ball around in a circle on offense. Falcons’ coach Geoff Arris called out for a stalling flag as it seemed the hosts were simply passing with no intent to score.

They were just getting warmed up.

Behind four goals and three assists from junior Connor Brown, Mt. Ararat took off with eight second-half goals en route to a comfortable 10-4 win.

Deadlocked at 2-2 to start the second half, both teams traded possession and saw a few transition opportunities on offense. It wasn’t until Brown ran around the cage and slipped one past Freeport (1-4) goalie Garrison Thompson that Mt. Ararat (4-4) got going. Freshman Steel Crawford answered with a score for Freeport two minutes after Brown’s first, but for the remainder of the frame, the Eagles offense was flying.

Brown avoided a defender and shook the net with another unassisted goal that forced a Freeport timeout at 4:02, and then long-stick midfielder Steven Schuman ran right off the whistle from a penalty and ripped one home to make the score 5-3. Brown capped off his hat trick from close range with 1:08 to play and Mt. Ararat was in total control.

“He’s a good leader, hard worker,” Mt. Ararat coach Matt Haskell said of Brown. “Good hands. He’s a good finisher. In addition to scoring goals, he helps other players on his team be better.”

To add insult to the injury of Freeport’s Eriksen Shea clanking one off the post in the final minute of the third, just two minutes into the fourth, Eagles goalie Parker Lacy launched a full-field pass to Mark Abreu, who caught it in stride and finished in tons of space to make it 7-3. Brown assisted Sawyer Watson a couple minutes later at 8:46. Suddenly, Mt. Ararat couldn’t be stopped.

“We just had a talk at halftime, saying we needed to step it up a little bit,” Brown said. “Work together, take our time, run the plays that we needed to. It just seemed to click. Our legs seemed to warm up, same thing with our sticks. Just a click.”

“They ran a zone. We were not expecting to face a zone,” Haskell said. “They ran it very, very well. It just took a long while. We got a few good looks and their goalie made some great saves. We scored a lot on transition, that’s what really helped us right there. You score on transition, the zone doesn’t slow you down.”

Brown added one more underhand goal on a nifty pass from Matt Lawrence at 4:59, and then the two switched roles as Lawrence finished himself on a tight near-post rip to round out the scoring. The Eagles fired 30 shots on the night, and losing its starting defender Deven Hannan to injury certainly didn’t help things for Freeport.

“We put in another guy that doesn’t ever play close D,” Arris said. “He isn’t really familiar with it, so they eventually figured that out and they exploited it pretty well. Just miscommunication on that part and they got a little tired, also. Kind of caught up with them in that second half.”

Even first half

After almost 10 minutes of a stalemate in the first quarter, Watson finally nabbed a goal at 2:50 when he snuck behind the defense and beat Thompson one-on-one. Freeport’s Kaleb Barrett cut inside and equalized with just 33.4 seconds on the clock and it was dead even after one with three shots from each side.

Connor Dostie gave the Falcons their only lead midway through the second quarter, but Mt. Ararat, which launched 11 shots in the frame, tied it up again via Schuman at 1:01. After that, the Freeport offense went cold and only managed one goal until the final three minutes of the game, when Dostie bounced one in from mid-range.

“Defensively, I think we’re doing a pretty good job,” Brown said. “Sometimes we just need to communicate a little bit better. Once that happens, once we have the leader really step up, we are successful on defense.”

Even with Mt. Ararat winning all eight faceoffs in the second half, the opportunity was there for Freeport. Wide-open counter attacks sometimes ended with sloppy giveaways or interceptions.

“We just need to pass the ball better,” Arris said. “Like we know how. There were a lot of times where they would pressure us and we would just throw it away, for no reason. We did a very good job defensively, on any part of the field, putting the ball on the ground, but picking it back up was not our strong point today. They took advantage of that.”

With 12 underclassmen on the roster, those types of mistakes don’t surprise Arris. Much of this season will be learning on the fly and gaining varsity experience.

“We’re building,” Arris said. “We’ve kept some tight games against pretty good teams. We just played Falmouth, so they’re coming off of that loss (14-3). They take it hard, but it’s Falmouth. I thought they played well. Same situation coming up against these guys. I consider us to be equal with them, but it was their day and they deserved it. They played really well.”

Mt. Ararat 10, Freeport 4

At Mt. Ararat High School

	Freeport	—	1	1	1	1	—	4
Mt.		Ararat—	1	1	4	4	—	10

Goals — (F) Kaleb Barrett, Connor Dostie 2, Steel Crawford; (MtA) Sawyer Watson 2, Steven Schuman 2, Connor Brown 4, Mark Abreu, Matt Lawrence. Assists — (F) Perrin Davidson, Nate Thomas, Kaleb Barrett; (MtA) Steven Schuman, Connor Brown 3, Orion Sargent, Matt Lawrence. Shots — Mt. Ararat 30, Freeport 12. Saves — (F) Garrison Thompson 13; (MtA) Parker Lacey 5. Faceoffs — Mt. Ararat 11, Freeport 2. Records — Mt. Ararat 4-4, Freeport 1-4. Up next for the Eagles — Monday at home against Edward Little, 6:30 p.m. Up next for the Falcons — Tuesday at home against Wells, 4 p.m.