The Road to the Playoffs

The last week of our season was simple. Win all four games and we earn the four seed in the playoffs, getting a bye into the quarterfinals and a week off. The four final games included senior night against Lindenhurst, two games against physical athletic teams and finally the showdown with our rivals from across Lake Ronkonkoma, Connetquot.

The first three games were against teams that came close to upsetting the seeds above us, so it was crucial that we did not fall asleep on any of them. Lindenhurst, the first team of the four, upset Connetquot earlier in the season. Between that big win, and the fact that the game was our senior night, we were ready for the challenge. We came out firing and our offense regained the swagger that they had in the beginning of the season scoring 18 goals. We continued this momentum into the next two games.

Northport was another challenging team, they had a high powered offense that was able to put up big numbers on other strong teams in our division. Our offense continued their momentum from the Lindenhurst game once again scoring 18 goals and our defense held the Tigers to only four. The team started to gain some much needed confidence after the loss of another player to injury.

Playing games every other day was taking a toll on all of our players bodies, the coaches tried to practice us as light as possible.  It was important that we got a little work in each day to continue the chemistry that our team was playing with.

Bay Shore was very similar to the first two games. They are a very athletic team with the potential to keep with any team in our league. As a team we kept rolling offensively and defensively. We scored 20 goals, our most since the first game of the season.

Our game against Connetquot was a final game until the playoffs. This season the T-birds are known for their strong defense, so the game was supposed to be a great one. Connetquot took West Islip to overtime, and only lost to Smithtown West by a goal. The game was on their grass field, in the rain, on their senior day. Nothing seemed to be going our way. But right off the opening whistle we were ready to play. We ended up taking the game from the T-birds with a final score of 14-7.

Our team is playing the best lacrosse we have had all season at the perfect time. We are entering the playoffs scoring 70 goals in our last five games. Our first playoff game is at home, next Tuesday at 4:00 against the winner of the North Babylon/Connetquot game.