Beverly Stuns Wakefield To Win North Lacrosse Title

If not for May 18, this score made perfect sense. Beverly's veteran team, a group with four straight appearances in the Division 2 North title game, had the patience, the game plan, and the experience to win on the big stage. Then why was Saturday's result such a huge surprise?

Beverly handed top-seeded Wakefield its first loss of the year, beating the Warriors, 7-6, at Concord-Carlisle just three weeks after losing to the same Warriors team, 18-8. With their third sectional lacrosse title in four years, Beverly advances to the state semifinals against Hingham on Tuesday.

Coach Jim LaSelva had the perfect answer for how his team could lose to Wakefield (20-1) by such a lopsided score in May, only to reverse the score in June.

"We're a different team now," said LaSelva.

And a team that did an outstanding job containing Wakefield All-American Austin Collard. In May, Collard scored seven goals. On Saturday, he had one.

"We said if we held him to three goals we'd win," said LaSelva.

Much of the success in containing Collard was due to the efforts of the Beverly offense. With the Panthers in possession of the ball, it kept Collard on the sidelines. With Beverly in control, all Collard could do was watch.

"They had a whole different game plan," said Wakefield coach Andrew Lavalle. "They tried to slow us down on offensive side by maintaining possession. They just had a great game plan. That was the name of the game, keep the ball away from us. What it came down to a lot of times was just throwing and catching. Fundamentals killed us today."

It was 3-3 at the half before Beverly (13-9) took a lead it never gave up when Sam Abate scored an unassisted goal with 6:51 to play in the third. A minute later Beverly goalie Kevin Morency made a nice stop on Collard to keep it at 4-3. It went to 5-3 with 1:07 left in the third when Nick DiLuiso scored the second of his four goals off an assist by Kyle Chouinard. Wakefield cut it to 5-4 on a goal by Anthony Forziati.

Beverly's DiLuiso then scored back-to-back goals to make it 7-4, the last coming with 4:20 remaining in the game. Wakefield responded, with Braedan Langlois scoring two goals to cut the margin to 7-6 with 3:24 to play. Beverly took a timeout with 2:22 to play. And with the score still 7-6, Wakefield took a timeout with 22 seconds left. Three straight shots in the final seconds all went wide, the clock sounded, and Beverly players stormed the field.

"These seniors have been to the North final four times, so they're battle tested," said LaSelva. "It's the toughness of these guys and their ability to handle the pressure."

May 18 is a distant memory.

"We played a bad game," said LaSelva. "We were not sure of ourselves. We're a different team. We're hungry, we came to play, and we're looking forward to the next one. We just want one more bus ride."

They'll get one Tuesday.