Winchester Will Play For State Lax Title Thursday

CONCORD - You'd think scoring five goals in the state semifinals would be enough to make junior Grant Murray the talk of Winchester. In some corners of town, maybe he is.

But if you were at Concord-Carlisle High School Monday afternoon and saw the Sachems beat St. John's (S), 10-3, it was the defense that dominated the post-game discussion and sent Winchester to a berth in Thursday's Division 2 state lacrosse championship at Boston University.

Was it a great defensive game plan for the Pioneers, or just more of the same for a Winchester defense that's been led all season by All-American captain Hayden Bean.

"I prefer to think of it as more of the same," said coach John Pirani, whose team will play for its first state title since 2000. "We played very, very well. And I thought Matty Suffredini had a great game in the cage as well. It's a combination and it's what we've been doing all year."

Winchester (21-1) was ahead, 3-2, after one quarter with Grant scoring twice and senior captain Jake Mabardy once. But St. John's (17-5) tied it, 3-3, seconds into the second quarter. It stayed that way for the remainder of the half until Ryan McCarthy scored with 1:22 to play. Winchester held a 4-3 lead at the break and it felt like the last 24 minutes would be a back-n-forth struggle.

In the third quarter Charlie Ward scored to make it 5-3, before James Gibbon scored to make it 6-3 and that's how the quarter ended. In the fourth quarter, the Winchester defense continued to shut down the Pioneers led by Bean, Lukas Mix, McCarthy, John Guthrie, Brandon Lavey, and Andrew Murray.

Little changed in the fourth as St. John's either couldn't get through the Sachem defense or were stopped by Suffredini.

Then Grant Murray took over. He scored the first of his three straight goals at 11:05 of the fourth to make it 7-3. The second came with 4:59 to play and his final goal just 17 seconds later. Mabardy ended a run of six straight Winchester goals with his second that made it 10-3.

"We didn't really change the game plan that much," said Pirani. "They were jamming the middle so we're not going to feed the middle any more. We had success with that all year but we got away from that today because we had no success with that in the first half. So we made a couple of adjustments but no big deal."

It may have been no big deal but the Sachems shut out a talented Pioneers attack in the second half. Add in Murray's scoring and Winchester is one win from a state title. That's a huge deal.