Novi — April 22. Earth Day.
Catholic Central’s lacrosse team celebrated the environmental awareness holiday in a most unusual fashion: they dug a hole for themselves in a critical match with archrival Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice.
The Warriors were only too happy to keep the Shamrocks buried, building a 13-1 lead en route to a 15-9 victory.
April 22 was highlighted on the Shamrocks’ athletic calendar as “the” day when CC would add to its rich lore by being the team that snapped Brother Rice’s incredible 133-game winning streak over the past 10 years against in-state schools.
Except ... Rice’s neighbor a mile down Lahser Road, Detroit Country Day, had done the dirty deed six days earlier, 8-7, in dramatic overtime.
OK, so CC didn’t get the big prize, but they could apply some salve to their pride by putting an end to the streak of 20 losses dealt them by the Warriors.
With just 42 ticks off the opening clock, the smallest Shamrock — 5-foot-4, 120-pound sophomore attacker Justin Baker, the team’s second-leading scorer with 22 goals — crammed the ball in the net, while standing close enough for a handshake in front of Rice’s senior goalie, Chris Lievois, who played brilliantly the rest of the way.
Some 78 seconds later, Baker’s counterpart — 5-foot-11, 165-pound sophomore attacker Morgan Mack — drilled a tying goal for the Warriors from 15 yards out past CC’s senior goalie, Joe Williams.
It probably isn’t right to call that exchange of goals a turning point with just two minutes played, but the effect was noticeable: Rice’s offense turned into a smooth, fluid unit, its defense smothering, while CC’s offense became frozen in place and its defense with more holes than Swiss cheese.
The coaches succinctly summed it up: “We became timid, passive,” said Shamrocks coach Dave Wilson. “That orange mystique got into their heads,” referencing Brother Rice’s colors.
“Our game plan was to control the tempo,” said Rice’s first-year head coach, Ajay Chawla. “We slowed the game down in our minds, but yet came out with fire.”
The Warriors also came out with sticks converted into shovels, helping CC make the hole deeper, piling on a dozen unanswered goals from all directions, from seven different players. Mack carried the biggest shovel of all, scoring a career-high six goals. “The ball just kept coming my way,” Mack said, “so I kept shooting.”
The true turning point came in a span of 17 seconds. Rice scored twice in the closing eight seconds of the first quarter and once again in the first nine seconds of the second quarter.
CC showed it had a pulse with six straight goals in the second half to make the final score appear more respectable.
The question on everyone’s mind was how Rice would respond after the disappointment of the streak-snapping loss to Country Day.
“We weren’t happy, naturally, even a bit angry,” said Chawla, a 1993 Rice grad and assistant for 11 years to Rob Ambrose, the designer of the Warriors powerful lacrosse program, who resigned last summer. “We talked about it the next day, had an intense practice, determined not to look backward.”
Looking ahead, barring an upset, the two teams will confront each other May 10 for the CHSL championship, which the Warriors have won 11 times in a row, and 15 of 16 times since 1997. CC was second-best the last four years.
Beyond that is the state Division 1 crown, worn for nine years in a row by Rice. On three of those occasions, the Shamrocks were runner-up.
Don Horkey is a freelance writer. He may be reached at [email protected].
