Against Pontiac Notre Dame Prep, Clarkston’s lacrosse team put up all the fight in a 9-4 win on a warm spring night before a sparse home crowd Monday.
Trailing 3-1 late in the first, Michael Proctor scored with 1:37 remaining in the quarter and Nicholas Perry scored early in the second to tie the game 3-3.
Clarkston (1-1) scored four unanswered goals from the 9:00 point of the second quarter through the end of the third for a commanding 7-3 lead.
The Irish (0-2) owned the time of possession all night long making themselves at home in the Clarkston zone where a plethora of opportunities were denied by the Wolves? defense or squandered by bad passes and violations.
‘We need to utilize and finish when we’re running our plays. We didn’t seem to not run our plays like we practiced all week,? Notre Dame coach Ben Ingram said.
‘We held the ball like we wanted to’but today they got us on their run-and-gun game and they took it to us.?
The Wolves added two more fourth quarter goals to pad their lead after Robert Healy scored his third goal of the game for the Irish at 8:45 of the quarter.
Chris Salo’s hat-trick for the Wolves came from his capitalization on offense passing and shooting, Clarkston coach Brian Kaminskas said.
‘He really ran our fast break well,? Kaminskas said. ‘He did a great job moving to the ball. He was able to see the field and distribute the ball on offense. He took some pretty good angles to the cage and forced some slides on a lot of other guys to get open.?
Procter, Perry, Taelor Hasse, Eric Salo, Matthew McEntee and Jon Avery each had one goal for Clarkston.
The five-goal win was a sharp turnaround from Friday’s 12-2 loss versus Warren De La Salle.
‘We concentrated over the weekend on clearing, riding the ball and ground balls and the guys did much better,? Kaminskas said.
?(On defense) we talked about denying the dodge and not allowing a player to go toward the net and take a shot and we made a couple of adjustments and the guys really came around to it.?
The Wolves travel to Grand Blanc Wednesday at 7:45 p.m.