The first three minutes were pretty quiet. Although St. Anne’s-Belfield was controlling the ball and pouring on the shots, Covenant goalkeeper Giles Cabe was able to keep the Saints off the board. However, in the next five minutes, STAB scored five times. And after taking a 13-goal lead into halftime, the Saints continued to pour it on even with the starters taking the sidelines. It was a one-sided affair with St. Anne’s coming away with a 21-3 win.
“It was a great night for us and we really wanted to set the tempo early,” said Saints coach Bo Perriello. “It was also great to get a lot of guys into the mix for us and give them a lot of time (on the field).”
Owen Van Arsdale opened up the scoring on a goal assisted by Andrew Crockett and from that point forward the STAB offense was simply too much as they put the team out by as many as 19 goals by the fourth quarter and the defense, although still relatively young, was staunch.
“We’re going to keep working on our defense,” Van Arsdale said. “They’ve really come into their own lately and we’re going to keep improving on offense. We had a great year offensively last year and we’re working on the little things to keep getting better.”
Crockett, Michael Morris and Connor McCullough would join in on the first half scoring spree as did Hobey Jiranek.
Van Arsdale led all scorers with seven points on the night with a hat trick to go along with four assists. Crockett netted five goals and an assist. Morris had four goals while Fred O’Connor scored twice.
With the Saints out in front 11-0, Covenant was finally able to put a shot in net when Tav Hafner scored off of a pass from Kohls Godine. Hafner scored two of the three Covenant goals on the day with Alex Kuehler providing the third.
The Eagles (10-8), who played in the VIC semifinals th`e day before, jump back into their conference tournament in the championship game at and against Blue Ridge on Saturday at 1 p.m.
“When we played Blue Ridge the first time, our defense had not played that level of an offense,” said Covenant coach Rich Little. “I think we’ve had a few games here towards the end of the season that have us better prepared.”
The Saints (15-3) host Collegiate on Friday at 7 p.m.
