Pingry wins second straight boys lacrosse state title
The two goals Thomas Zusi scored in the closing minutes of the opening half enabled the Pingry boys lacrosse team to pull away from a pesky opponent as the Big Blue won their second consecutive state championship with a 9-4 victory over Montclair Kimberley Academy on Wednesday night.
With its win in the Non-Public B final at Hopewell Valley High School, Pingry (15-3) advanced to the Tournament of Champions, where the Big Blue will find out who they will face once the NJSIAA seeds the remaining teams in the field.
Pingry overcame the graduation of nine seniors — six of who are playing in college — to defend its state title.
“It was a special team last year,” Pingry head coach Mike Webster said. “That was a great senior class. The big thing was last year gave us confidence. We knew we had to work hard at it in the offseason, in the preseason and in the regular season. It gave us a taste of victory last year, and we wanted to get it back. So these younger guys this year were able to knuckle down and work hard to get back to where we wanted to be.”
A difficult schedule prepared Pingry — which plays in the state’s toughest league, the Skyland Conference — for the postseason. The Big Blue’s three losses were by a total of five goals to teams (Moorestown, Bridgewater-Raritan and Montgomery) that played for state titles on Wednesday night.
“Every game is a battle,” Webster said of conference play. “We played tough teams. I think it’s Top 10 strength of schedule. We play hard every game. Those games really get you better.”
Pingry demonstrated its offensive balance — five players scored against Montclair Kimberley Academy (14-7) — and played a stellar zone defense that helped goalies Frankie Dillon and David Metzger (combined nine saves) keep the ball out of the back of the net.
Zusi, who leads the team with 46 goals, scored twice in the final 2:16 of the second quarter to give Pingry a 6-2 lead.
“Lacrosse is a game of runs, and you want to try to get a little run before you go into halftime,” Webster said of Zusi’s clutch tallies. “We were winning by a couple, so we felt good, but we needed to get a little more cushion there, and he got two goals right before half, which gave us a lot of confidence. We felt comfortable going into the second half, so those were big for us.”
Jake Moss netted a hat trick for the Big Blue, while teammate Andrew Chang scored twice. Max Cummings and George Enman contributed one goal apiece to the victory.
Montclair Kimberley Academy’s Joe Strain, who leads the club with 49 goals, twice helped his team rebound from one-goal deficits in the first quarter, scoring on a couple of lasers from 20 yards out.
After Strain’s second goal knotted the contest 2-2 with 1:52 left in the first quarter, Chang and Moss each scored in the closing minutes of the quarter, rebuilding Pingry’s lead to 4-2. More important, perhaps, the Big Blue shut down Strain for the remainder of the half, making an adjustment that did not compromise the back side of its zone defense.
“We play zone defense, so we don’t want to try to worry too much about one player,” Webster explained. “But we did try to get matchups on him. In the zone, we wanted to try to get a certain long stick (Ollie Martin) on him. We felt if we did that, it would be good for us, so we had to rotate our zone a little bit to do that. And we did shut him off a couple times with the short sticks.”
Moss, who stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 25 pounds, plays with an athleticism that belies his size. He closed out the scoring with 4:43 left in regulation as Pingry fell one goal shy of becoming only the second team (Seton Hall Prep being the other) to post double digits on Montclair Kimberley Academy.
“If he gets the ball and he can go north-south, it’s tough to stop him,” Webster said of Moss (25 goals, 19 assists). “He’s gotten better and better as the year goes on.”
The pivotal stretch of the contest — a rematch of last year’s state semifinal, which Pingry won 15-5 — came early in the second quarter. With Pingry holding a 4-2 lead, Dillon made an acrobatic kick save with Montclair Kimberley Academy’s Ryan Dancy (30 goals) on his doorstep. On the ensuing Pingry possession, the Big Blue unloaded five shots, with the fifth hitting the pipe. Montclair Kimberley Academy got a great look in transition, but Max Hall hit the post with a shot, and the score remained 4-2 until Zusi went to work.
“We were being very patient in the second half,” Webster said. “We knew we had the lead. We knew we were going to play again (in the T of C), so we didn’t want to get too tired.”