South boys’ lacrosse nearly pulls off miracle win

Pirates fall just short against top-seeded Ridge

By: Justin Feil
   The night before taking on top-seeded Ridge in the Group III state tournament quarterfinals, the West Windsor-Plainsboro South boys’ lacrosse team watched ‘Miracle.’
   Saturday, the Pirates came close to making a sequel to the movie about the 1980 gold-medal United States ice hockey team before falling, 5-4.
   "Before the game," said Pirate coach Kerry Weigner, "I told them I didn’t put the movie on to show we had to have a miracle. I thought there were a lot of similarities between the teams. We took some lumps this season. We got smacked by some teams. But in each of those games, there were 10-15 minutes we played with those teams.
   "It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. It’s what you do at the end of the season. We had the fullest confidence we could play with anybody. We just had to do it for 48 minutes."
   The Pirates put together their finest effort of the season to push 16-3 Ridge to the limit. The No. 1 seed had to come back from one-goal deficits twice and hold off WW-P South after they trimmed the lead to one goal halfway through the fourth quarter.
   "They walked out of there, scared to death," Weigner said. "They barely got through there."
   The Pirates almost pulled an upset for the ages before concluding their season at 9-9. They led, 2-1, before three straight goals by Ridge gave the hosts a 4-2 halftime lead. A man-up goal early in the third quarter brought the Pirates within striking distance before Ridge scored the game-winning goal.
   "We didn’t play one of our better offensive games, but defensively it was almost lights out," Weigner said. "Evan Burke was huge in goal. Ali Reslan held their top offensive guy who’s a big-time scorer to an assist maybe. Gio Alexander did a great job on their second best player. Jeff Reimann did a great job on his attack man."
   WW-P South will have plenty of hope for future state tournaments with five freshmen, including Burke, in the starting lineup. That make-up wasn’t expected before the year began.
   "We’ve come a long way from the beginning of the season," Weigner said. "We had four or five kids that we were supposed to have this season that didn’t come out. We had our captain quit two weeks into the season. We’ve had a lot of adversity throughout the season.
   "They were able to take the little things we learned and the little things we’ve worked on and do them. I couldn’t be prouder of a group of guys, and I’ve been a head coach for nine years. I couldn’t be prouder with the guys after all they went through this season."
   The way it ended wasn’t quite what the Pirates had hoped for this season. But the ending was nothing to be ashamed of, not after coming so close to a miraculous upset.
   "There were times we could have crumbled," Weigner said. "We were up 2-1. The next thing we knew, we were down, 4-2. We kept digging in and fighting. For the team we played against, the No. 9 team in the state, as coaches, we lost but a lot of guys had fun today. The intensity level was sky-high. It was fun. We lost, but it was a lot of fun coaching in a game like that and I know our kids had a lot of fun playing in that."