One of Western Albemarle boys lacrosse’s top scorers, A.J. Donovan, who’d already scored a pair of goals for the Warriors, crumpled to the ground with an injury in the third quarter of Western’s clash with Covenant.
The Warriors needed to regroup, and they needed to do it fast with a surging Covenant squad starting to pick up steam.
“We’re shallow, depending on what A.J.’s injury outcome is,” said Western coach Alex Whitten. “We’re going to have to deal. Losing a guy like A.J. is tough.”
The Warriors couldn’t completely hold off the Covenant charge, and went to overtime deadlocked with the Eagles, but just seconds into extra time, a Luke Reilly ground ball followed by a feed to Oliver Herndon and Herndon’s game-winner allowed Western to escape with an 11-10 victory.
The Warriors gained a big advantage at the end of regulation when a penalty on Covenant at the buzzer gave Western possession and a man-up advantage to start overtime. The ball eventually got loose, leading to a mad scramble behind the cage. Reilly eventually came out of the fray with the ball.
“On the resulting play, what we thought was we needed was hats to the ball, we needed to win the ground ball game, the unforced turnover game and the hustle game,” Whitten said. “We came up with that fortuitous ground ball, Luke Reilly dug that out of the pit and found Ollie on the back side. That’s a big play.”
Somehow in all the chaos, Reilly found Herndon and a long pass through a scrambling Covenant defense made its way to the Warriors’ longstick midfielder. Herndon buried a tough shot in the top right corner for his third goal of the day as he continues to emerge as one of the area’s most unique offensive weapons.
“He’s versatile, it can be an artillery cannon, it can be a sniper rifle, it can be a tank,” Whitten said. “He’s starting to find his prowess as a player, for a long time Oliver has really been a blunt instrument but now he’s an offensive threat when he has the ball. He’s also starting to communicate more and become an even better leader. His leadership has gone to another level which has been huge for us.”
For their part, the Eagles managed to rally from an early deficit to tie the game up in the second half but Covenant couldn’t get over the top, in part because Western’s Jack Lofreddo was rock solid on faceoffs. Western held a 17-8 advantage on faceoffs, with Lofreddo stepping up in a particularly big way in the second half.
“It was a game runs, but it was won at the faceoff x,” said Covenant coach Clay Tharrington. “We got some good runs from Craig (Van Dyke) in that first quarter but Lofreddo really turned it on and got them a lot of possessions.”
Carter Elliott finished with four goals to lead the Warriors on offense while Herndon notched his hat trick and Donovan scored two goals. For Covenant, Clark Gathright finished with four goals while Okleigh Archer managed to net a hat trick. Austin Hall finished with nine saves for the Eagles.
