Worth the Wait
GREENSBURG — It wasn't quite a wake-up call. A little nudging, perhaps?
Whatever it was, Mars responded to it.
Trinity (Camp Hill) scored on its first two shots of the game Friday at Seton Hill University, giving the Shamrocks a 2-0 lead 91 seconds into their first-round PIAA 2A boys lacrosse playoff game.
The Planets weren't fazed.
“We knew we were going to get ours,” senior attack Mike Doyle said.
And they did.
Repeatedly.
Mars (18-3) scored the game's next eight goals and its lead was never threatened from there. The Planets rolled to a 22-12 victory in a game originally scheduled for Tuesday before being postponed three successive days due to stormy weather.
“We're not about to come up with any alibis, but it has been a crazy week,” Trinity coach Dave Heisey said. “We left home twice and had to turn around and go back.
“We didn't have our top face-off man (senior Riley Johnson) available today and that hurt us more than anything.”
The Planets lost the first two faceoffs of the day, leading directly to the early Shamrock goals.
“We lost those first draws pretty badly,” Mars coach Bob Marcoux admitted.”Once we got that part of the game straightened out, we were able to play our game.
“(Senior) Garrett Reinke and (freshman) Austin Cote are our faceoff guys and they were outstanding today.”
Before the game was two minutes old, Chris Sicher had pulled Mars even. He scored a pair of games off assists from Cote and Doyle 20 seconds apart.
When Doyle scored his first goal of the day 4:47 into the contest, the Planets had the lead they never lost.Mars led 8-4 after one period, 15-7 after two and 20-11 after three. Neither team did much offensively in the fourth quarter.“Mars moves the ball around so well,” Heisey said. “This game was about possession. We had to find a way to stop the bleeding in the faceoff circle because we were losing badly in there.“They are an athletic team that doesn't make many mistakes.”Doyle wound up scoring nine goals and added three assists. After his ninth goal — with 8:33 still left on the clock — he was removed by Marcoux for the rest of the game.“Mike is such a dynamic scorer.” Marcoux said. Whether its a double-team, teams trying to lock him off ... Whatever teams try to do to stop him, Mike finds a way to beat it.”Doyle scored one goal from practically behind his back, another while being knocked to the ground. He was knocked to the turf well after unleashing another goal.“I thought there were a few missed calls on some of the stuff that was going on out there,” Doyle said. “You can't worry about it. Just play through it.“Defenses pay a lot of physical attention to me. It's part of the game.”Doyle, headed to Indianapolis University, now has 110 goals on the season.Sicher scored five goals and had two assists for the Planets. Wes Scurci had two goals and three assists, Cote two goals and two assists, Reinke a pair of goals.Gavin Honeycutt made nine saves in goal for the Planets, Trinity (14-7) goalkeeper Nathan Staufer had five saves.Michael Coleman scored five goals for Trinity. Danny Scott — headed to Loylola (Md.) to continue his career — had four tallies.Mars plays Hershey at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Penn State University in the second round.“I liked the way we responded today,” Marcoux said. “With all this rain, we had to practice in the gym a couple of days.“We came out and played a solid game against a strong opponent.”
