Whaler Boys Lacrosse Clinches Third Straight State Semifinal Appearance

For a third consecutive season, the Whaler boys lacrosse team has clinched a spot in the MIAA Division 4 State Semifinal following a 10-9 victory over the Pentucket Panthers at Vito Capizzo Stadium Saturday evening.

"It's just a good group of kids starting with, I'll even say four years ago," Whaler head coach Sam Aloisi said about his program making three straight state semifinals. "Starting with that crew when these (seniors) were freshmen. There were a few good senior leaders that led these guys then, and then 2024 with that crew, and last year I thought was a tremendous accomplishment after graduating all those guys from the ‘24 championship team to do what we did last year and make the semis… and unfortunately that was it. But they're all back for one more try. These kids know, the upperclassmen in particular, what it's like to win, and they're hungry, and they want to get back there (to the state final). So that's the goal.”

In a matchup between the second-seeded Whalers and seventh-seeded Panthers, Nantucket seniors Noah Stringer and Jake Grant got the scoring going for the Whalers in the first quarter, but it was a 2-2 game after one quarter as Pentucket refused to go away or fall into a big hole on the scoreboard. After senior Arann Hanlon made it a 3-2 Whaler lead 39 seconds into the second quarter, the Panthers scored two quick goals to take a 4-3 lead with nine minutes left in the first half.

"It wasn't (the defense's) best game, and we knew that this team was going to move the ball quickly around the perimeter," Aloisi said. "It's not an excuse, but part of it is we haven't seen that in three weeks. We sort of got lulled to sleep the first two playoff games, and even the last game of the season against the Vineyard really wasn't much of a test for our defense, and this was. We did make a lot of mistakes in the first half, and even in the third quarter, but that last five minutes our defense was awesome. They stood tall when they had to. Jeremy (Jenkinson, senior goalie) bailed us out a couple times with a couple point-blank saves, which is nothing new either, right?”

The Whalers responded nicely by scoring the next four goals and took a 7-4 lead, but Pentucket didn’t go away. They scored to make it 7-5 with 1:11 to go in the first half – a score that stood heading into halftime and tied the game 7-7 with nine minutes remaining in the third quarter.

"They didn't go away partly because we let them stay in it," Aloisi said. "We didn't sort of squash them. When we were up by two, they'd come back and get one and then they tied it. Then we go up by one and they come back. If we could have gone up by three or four, I think it would have been a different story, but again like you said, they were resilient. They're big, strong, athletic kids.”

Grant put the Whalers up 8-7 with 8:08 to go in the third and senior attacker Marco La Chuisa made it a 9-7 game with 3:50 to go in the third. The Whalers took that two-goal lead into the final quarter.

Pentucket cut it to 9-8 with 9:57 left in the game, but Hanlon struck back with a goal to make it 10-8. Hanlon has made it a habit to save some of his best performances for the postseason and routinely raises his game in the biggest moments. He had another stellar game on Saturday finishing with three goals, five assists, and some of his best work came in the transition game on plays that don’t appear on the stat sheet.

"There were a few minutes there where Arann just sort of carried us," Aloisi said. "He's a great player and that's what great players do. He came through big when we needed them.”

Aloisi also credited junior midfielder Kyden Whitfield for his work in the faceoff department after the game.

“Kyden battling for those faceoffs today, it was tough in there, but he did a great job,” Aloisi said. “The only defense their guy had was to hold him or trip him, and finally the refs started calling it thankfully. But he was great.”

Up next, the Whalers will travel to Scituate High School for a neutral site matchup against #3 Manchester-Essex. The time of the game is to be determined, but the game is likely to be on Tuesday with the winner advancing to the Division 4 State Championship.

"We don't know a lot about Manchester Essex… it's hard to get anything on those north shore teams, but I would imagine they're going to be a similar team to these guys I would imagine," Aloisi said. "We're just going to have to clean up some stuff on defense and go from there. I mean, we gave up nine. We gave up nine to Falmouth. That was the most all year until today.”

More photos below from Saturday's game taken by Chris Tran.