Jun. 12—Fallston High School won a pair of region lacrosse championships Friday as both the boys and girls teams claimed titles in Class 1A Region I play at home.
The boys team beat Havre de Grace, 19-7, while the girls cruised past Harford Tech, 16-3.
In the boys win, Fallston (10-1) overcame an early challenge from the outnumbered Warriors (4-8), who led 3-1 late into the first quarter.
Carson Holloway’s first of two goals opened the scoring for the Warriors (4-8), but Fallston’s Aiden Dixon tied the game with his lone goal.
Wyatt Molyneux, the grandson of longtime Fallston teacher, coach and athletic director Dave Cesky, scored the game’s next two goals for the 3-1 Warriors lead.
Fallston, though, answered and the Cougars answered big. The Cougars scored nine straight goals, two to end the first quarter and seven to start the second.
Face-off man Dixon, a sophomore, was the main reason for the Cougars run. Dixon won 15-of-20 face-offs which led to the barrage of Cougars goals.
“I had to get the face-off and Jarred Meehan (Havre de Grace) is a very talented face-off guy. He was my toughest opponent I’d say this year, but he’s really good,” Dixon said. “Going against him, it made me better, but it made me think that I can do this. It gives me a challenge and I love to break challenges and I knew that when we were down. we needed the ball.”
Chris King was the biggest recipient of Dixon’s work, scoring a game-high five goals to lead the Cougars, who led 14-4 at the half.
Noah Richard and Luke Wolff added three goals apiece, while Quinn McLaughlin and Peter Buckler added two goals each.
The Cougars also got goals from Remy Harding, Brennan Steffes and Mike Estremsky.
Fallston assists went to Richard (3), Dixon (3), Brendon Mudd (3), Buckler (2) and McLaughlin.
“Jason’s done a great job over there, they had some injuries, a little short staffed and they’re a good team, they’ve got some good players,” Cougars head coach Patrick Mull said. “I told our guys, we need to be ready to play, they may look like they only have 13 kids, but they’re all players. They fought and they played well, that first quarter was tight and we were thinking, man, we’re in for a dogfight, 40 minutes, and our guys stepped it up and put it in another gear and the latter part of the game was a lot of fun.”
The Cougars outscored the Warriors, 4-2 in the third quarter to lead 18-6, while both teams added one goal each in the final quarter.
Molyneux led Warriors scoring with three goals. Reagan Dent and Alec Whipkey added a goal apiece. Meehan added two assists and Holloway had one assist.
“I’m really proud of our guys, we have a great group of kids, we don’t make any excuses about numbers, age, we’re just athletes that work hard and very coachable kids and we love being with them every day,” Warriors head coach Jason Bellamy said. “Today, early on we were executing well and their face-off man [Dixon] is outstanding. It’s the key to the game, if you can’t keep possession of the ball, you end up playing make it, take it. It’s very tough, it wears down the defensive guys and the offensive guys get frustrated.”
Fallston goalie Jack Emmett had five saves, before giving way to Landon Mills, who had six saves.
Havre de Grace also played two goalies with TC Hinton making 14 saves and Liam Whitehead adding two saves.
Fallston will play Monday in a state quarterfinal. Time and place to be determined.
Cougars make it a sweep
The Fallston girls scored early and often, rolling out to an 7-0 lead over the first 12 minutes.
Mia Salvatierra scored her first goal just: 14 in and the Cougars rolled from there.
Salvatierra (two goals) was one-of-six players with multiple goals for the Cougars (12-1), who were led by Anna Miller’s three goals and one assist.
Caroline Griffith (one assist), Delaney Nicolaus, Juliana Williams and Ally Schromsky each scored two goals. Skylar Stevens (two assists), Olivia Bagosy and Ava Lambros added a goal apiece.
The Cougars led 11-0 at the half and 14-1 early in the second half.
“If upsets didn’t happen, half of the greatest sports movies wouldn’t be made,” Cougars head coach Maddie Palko said. The Couars had beaten the Cobras twice handily this season. “Yes, we knew that the odds were probably in our favor, but they’re also a team that you can’t let up. Fortunately for us, we just came out from the get-go and we’re making connections and making things happen.”
Williams dominated the draws with five controlled possessions which helped lead to scoring and defender Bella Bouffard led in ground balls with five. “It feels really nice, our team worked really hard this year and this three weeks of practice was definitely a little difficult, but we played together as team and family, so it worked out in our favor,” Bouffard said.
Tech had three players score goals. Madison Partridge, Kayla Olmstead and Natalie Storm scored a goal each.
Three Cougars goalies Makayla Hinkle (two saves), Summer Eddinger (one) and Maddy Eckstein (five) combined in the win.
Tech (7-6) played two goalies with Mia Courtalis making six saves and Jayci Carll adding two saves.
“We played Fallston two other times this year, so we knew what we were getting into and what didn’t help tonight is, we’re missing our superstar player Molly Re,” Tech assistant coach Brendan Poole said. Head coach Katie Freeman is out after giving birth recently.
Re was injured in the Cobras semifinal win at Havre de Grace on Wednesday.
The Cougars will play in state tourney action next week. Date, time and site to be determined.