Title Defense Comes Up Short, Boys Lax Loses In State Semifinals

The boys lacrosse team will not be repeating as state champions this spring following an 11-2 loss to the Cohasset Skippers Wednesday afternoon in the Div. 4 state semifinal at Barnstable High School. The Whalers and Skippers were tied 1-1 after one quarter of play but Cohasset – the top seed in the tournament – found another gear to their game to score five unanswered goals in the second quarter to put Nantucket in a 6-1 hole heading into halftime.

"It was a great season," Whaler head coach Sam Aloisi said. "Our defense, it obviously starts with Jeremy (Jenkinson, goalie) and we had Canton (Jenkinson) back there, but other than that there was no varsity experience, or very little. Paxton (Fitch) had a little, the Yates (twins) had none. We played mostly defense in this game. I thought that first quarter was awesome. The second quarter it was basically, what, fast break, one missed cut, and then a couple feeds to the crease and again, part of that goes back to experience, or lack of experience, and also part of it is that's a really good team, well coached team. Cohasset, those guys all know what they're doing. Every little mistake we made that really hasn't cost us so much this year, Cohasset took advantage of. They're just a really good team.”

The Whaler’s first goal came from senior midfielder Jake Johnson just seconds after Cohasset scored late in the first quarter. Nantucket's second goal didn’t come until the fourth quarter with Cohasset comfortably ahead 11-1. Junior Arann Hanlon tallied the goal to make it 11-2.

“Our guys, to accomplish what they did this year, is incredible to be honest,” Aloisi said. “They fought hard through all of it. You know, we obviously play in a real tough league, and we took some lumps there too, but they got to the state semis. I think it is quite an accomplishment. You look at how we graduated a lot of starters last year, and so did Sandwich (who we played in the state title game last year), and we made it two games further than they did. Not that that has to be the barometer, but it's a testament to this group of kids.”

Aloisi said it came down to his team's inability to stop Cohasset as they repeatedly fed the open man in the crease and their limited time of possession throughout the game. The Skipper's passing was as crisp as you'll see at the high school level on Wednesday. Aloisi also credited Cohasset’s wings on the draws and their speed.

"I think ultimately the pace was a little quicker than we were used to," Aloisi said. "But overall, this is a great experience for these guys moving forward. The biggest thing I saw on offense was we didn't have the ball. I mean, we didn't play enough offense, and then when we did, it's typical when you get down four or five goals. The offense gets it; they try to do too much individually. You saw how many balls we threw away, how many stupid passes we made. It's just invaluable experience going forward. Learn from it.”

Aloisi said with very few players graduating this Friday, the team should be returning a vast majority of their players and is excited about the future of the program.

“We have a very strong core coming back,” Aloisi said about next season. “The future looks very, very promising I think.”