The Varsity men’s lacrosse team took the field on a chilly Friday night in Oakland to take on the Dragons of Bishop O’Dowd. With the Dons undefeated on the season, this was rumored to be the toughest test so far, especially given O’Dowd’s recent upset of Campolindo 13-12.
The Dons looked good early on. Ian Sanftner won the first faceoff and the Dons quickly scored, compliments of a great strike by Dons attacker Simon Appel. After that, things got a little shaky for the Dons. They played tentatively for most of the first quarter and a series of turnovers led to three quick goals from the Dragons. Down 3-1, the Dons needed a spark. And they got it from what would turn out to be the offensive player of the night, Luke Dafferner, who had a killer move, juking out multiple O’ Dowd players for a great bounce shot goal. At the quarter the Dons were down 3-2.
In the second quarter the Dragons breathed fire once again, taking advantage of Dons’ mistakes and showing strong offensive prowess. With the Dragons now up 5-2, Dafferner scored again to bring the Dons to trail by 2 with a score of 5-3. In the closing minutes of the second quarter, Jan Korzeniowski streaked across the middle and had a beautiful goal to bring the Dons within one at half.
The Dons needed to tighten up their execution if they would have a chance to pull this one out on the road. Fortunately, that’s exactly what they did. The second half showed a dominating Acalanes defense that snuffed out the fire breathing Dragons. The 3rd quarter saw impressive play by goalie Val Grossi who had multiple spectacular saves, tenacious D by Henry Finegold and Corbin Gallegos and some great stick play by close defender Leo Deignan.
Ian Sanftner continued to dominate at the faceoffs giving the Dons multiple possessions and scoring opportunities. This resulted in goals by Jan Korzeniowski to tie it up and two more by sophomore Dafferner (his third and fourth for the night ) and one more from sophomore attack Jackson Tseng. In a desperate attempt to shift the momentum, the Dragons coaches asked for a stick check on Alex Cortez. But the challenged was denied and Cortez returned to the game to cause more havoc. Sanftner won yet another faceoff and the noise from Dons fans was deafening (Daffening?!) when Luke Dafferner went in for his 5th goal of the night making him the undisputed player of the night for the Dons. In a last ditch effort, the Dragons pulled their goalie and Brody Darin scored for the Dons on an open net, giving the Dons a 10-5 lead with a minute to play. The Dragons scored with 14 seconds left in the game, but at that point their fire had been extinguished by the suffocating Don’s D.
Dons take home a great come from behind victory, 10-6, to go 4-0 on the season.
It was a great night to be a Dons fan. Aca Strong, baby!
