permalink
Brendan Briggs and his mom Amanda share a nice moment on Mother's Day as NC took on Darien. Credit: Contributed
The 5A lacrosse team is hoping the old adage “offense wins games, but defense wins championships” holds true as they start their final march towards the end of season CONNY tournament.
This past weekend New Canaan’s tough defense which has earned the name “B.A.M.”–featuring Brendan Holahan, Andrew Nolan and Mack Seelert—were relentless allowing only two goals against John Jay and four goals versus Darien.
Holden Busby was a veritable wall between the pipes with seven saves and had a perfect record clearing the ball against John Jay’s rides. 5A’s offense exploded in the rain on Saturday winning 17-4 with 14 of the 17 goals coming off of assists.
Ryan Connelly led the team with a season-high of six points on three goals and three assists for New Canaan, including an assist to Cooper Jessop who scored a goal with virtually no angle, sneaking it inside the right pipe. Seven other New Canaan players tallied three points on the day including Tommy Augustine (one goal, two assists), John Totaro (two goals, one assist), Blake Wilson (two goals, one assist), Brendan Hagan (two goals, one assist), Griffin Gentner (one goal, two assists), Beau Johnson (one goal, two assists) and Brendan Briggs with the other hat trick on the day. The face-off circle was also dominated by NC with Cameron Wietfeldt having a perfect day going eight-for-eight, while Tommy Augustine went six-for-seven and John Totaro finished up seven-for-eight.
The annual New Canaan/Darien Mother’s Day game finally brought some sunny weather and a special rose ceremony where the 5th graders gave a rose and a hug to their moms before the contest began. New Canaan prevailed with a 9-2 victory with eight of the nine goals being score by different players and six of the nine goals coming from assists.
The contest opened up with Brendan Briggs throwing a perfect laser feed from X to a cutting Ryan Connelly who buried the first goal of the day and NC never looked back. Eight different New Canaan players scored, including Travis Sturcke with his now-patented 65 mph “missile” shot from 14 yards out for a top-shelfer.
The rest of the scoring came from Tommy Augustine (one goal, one assist), Blake Wilson (one goal, one assist), Tommy Goetz (one goal, one assist), Brendan Hagan(one goal), Beau Johnson (one assist), Brendan Briggs (two goals, one assist), Connor O’Donnell (one assist) and Matt Salmini who dug up a key ground ball in heavy traffic and fired it in the back of the net. New Canaan also took control at the X going 10-for-13 on faceoffs led by Tommy Augustine going a perfect five-for-five and Cameron Wietfeldt finishing up four-for-five.
The one trouble spot for New Canaan was getting hit with a season-record 10 penalties. Luckily, the man-down unit of Mack Seelert, Brendan Holahan, Andrew Nolan, Ty Groff and Brendan Hagan would come out on top giving up only two man-down goals from Darien’s 10 opportunities. The man-down unit also took advantage of a few forced turnovers and even converted two man-down goals for NC.
Holden Busby made 10 key saves to shut down any offensive threat from Darien. The play of the day came with Darien calling for an isolation play with their best player against Ram LSM Tristan Burt. After Darien’s top middie tried a few futile moves, Tristan went to work like a surgeon and stripped the ball, picked it up and cleared it up to the attack.
This weekend New Canaan will host Westport on Saturday at 1 p.m. and Greenwich on Sunday also at 1 p.m., both at Saxe.