St. John's (Shrewsbury) tops Algonquin in CMass Lax Showdown

By Joe Fantozzi (@joe_fantozzi35)

Shrewsbury, Mass. - The Saint John’s High School Pioneers defeated the Algonquin Tomahawks by the score 9-5 in a physical boys' lacrosse battle Tuesday afternoon.

The game was yet another chapter in Central Mass' most storied lacrosse rivalry, and these two clubs have also been highly competitive this season.  The leading scorer of the game was senior captain Jack Donahue of the Pioneers. Donahue had a hat trick and tagged two assists to go along with it. 

It was very clear from the beginning that whichever team would be more physical was going to win.  After the game, I spoke with Jack Donahue and he said, “Gonk is a longtime CMass rival of our team and we needed to be as aggressive as we could be in order to secure the win.”

The first quarter was very well defended by high teams.  Physical lacrosse in the middle of the field and around the net was challenging for either team to set a rhythm.  Junior attack Charlie Davidson put the Pioneers on the board first in this one.  SJ senior Teagan Callahan had a nifty behind the back goal a minute later to make the SJ lead two goals.

The second period is when the scoring really took off for these teams.  SJ was able to rack up four goals while Dom Russo put the Tomahawks on the board with two goals.  Russo had a quiet hat trick for Algonquin.

Jack Donahue handled all the scoring in this quarter for the Pioneers.  He contributed two of his three goals in the game during the third. Algonquin's attack scored three times as well in the period, which cut the lead to three goals going into the fourth quarter. 

The 4th quarter of this game was highly defensive.

Trailing by three goals, the Tomahawks had to figure out a way to win this game in the final quarter and beat the Pioneer defense. Senior goalie Cam Hearn allowed zero shots to get past him in net for the Pioneers, while attack Charlie Davidson put in an insurance goal early on in the quarter.

Senior Ben Scharf had this to say about his team’s defense today, “Our defense is jam packed with athletes who want to win games and we figure out how to put aggression and athleticism together to form great defense.”