FALMOUTH — Unbeaten Falmouth reeled off nine straight goals in the second half to roll to a 13-4 win over South Portland in a Class A boys’ lacrosse game Wednesday night.
The Yachtsmen (6-0) held South Portland scoreless for the final 39 minutes after getting off to a slow start.
“For whatever reason, we couldn’t start the way we wanted to,” Falmouth Coach David Barton said. “Credit to our guys, we buckled down.”
The score was tied 4-4 at the end of first half.
The Riots (4-2) jumped out to a 3-1 lead less than five minutes into the game, and it took the Yachtsmen the rest of the half to pull even. South Portland didn’t score after David Fiorini got his second goal 8:34 into the first quarter for a 4-2 lead.
With one second left in the first quarter, Reilly Tucker turned a feed from Lou Mainella into a goal for Falmouth.
Nick Farnham scored the equalizer with 45 seconds left in the second quarter after the Riots’ 20th turnover of the first half.
“(Turnovers) have been kind of our M.O. the whole season, and if we don’t turn that around, it’s going to be a tough season,” South Portland Coach Tom Fiorini said.
While South Portland had trouble holding onto the ball, Falmouth struggled to get the ball past Red Riots goalie Quinn Watson, who made 10 of his 14 saves during the first half.
“(Quinn) is lights out all the time like that,” Fiorini said. “(He) keeps us in game after game.”
“Quinn is one the best goalies in the state,” Barton said. “He’s the complete package, and I think we just wanted to take higher percentage shots on him (in the second half). Once we started to work for the higher percentage shot rather than the first shot that presented itself, things started to click a little bit better.”
Tom Fitzgerald and Nick Farnham each scored three goals for the Yachtsmen. Fitzgerald also recorded four assists and Farnham had one. Tucker scored twice, Mainella and Henry Farnham each added a goal and an assist, and Aiden Gallup, Zack Derhak and Lyendae St. Louis contributed a goal apiece.
Cooper Mehlhorn had two goals and an assist for South Portland.
“My team played a great first half, and in the second (our) unforced turnovers were just too many and (Falmouth) capitalized on them,” Fiorini said. “(Falmouth) swarmed the ball and they did a good job on groundballs. We just didn’t play well in the second half.”
Falmouth, in its first season in Class A, went into the game averaging more than 14 goals while allowing fewer than five.
“(Falmouth) has big, strong kids on defense and they’re aggressive,” Fiorini said. “We figured (their defense) out in the first half. Then in the second half, we just weren’t doing the things we needed to do. We got a little flat-footed and stopped throwing the ball and stopped moving to and fro. We just weren’t doing a good job.”
Correction: This story was revised at 9:34 a.m., May 10, 2018, to reflect that Cooper Mehlhorn had two goals and an assist for South Portland. An earlier version of the story misidentified him. It was revised again at 4:10 p.m. to correct the scoring stats for Falmouth’s Tom Fitzgerald.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story