Dolphins crushed in regionals

Gulf Breeze High School was eliminated in the first round of regional competition in both the boys’ and girls’ 2016 FHSAA Lacrosse Championship matches last Friday night.
The boys’ team fell 17-2 in a tough loss to Maclay High School, while the Lady Dolphins were outscored 7-5 by a tenacious Oak Hall High School offense.
The loss brings a sudden end to a historic season, marking the beginning of a local lacrosse district in the area and the opportunity for local teams to have a better chance of reaching state competition. Before the start of this season and the creation of District 1, the Dolphins had to travel to compete in a high school district.
The boys’ team competed in a district out of Tallahassee, where they have faced Friday’s victors Maclay every year since 2013 — having yet to muster more than two goals against the Marauders’ tough defense.
The girls’ team traveled to Gainesville in order to play in a high school district and likewise faced Oak Hall there, who have an undefeated record against the Dolphins.

Boys

The Dolphins took an early backseat in Friday’s first round play-in match against a relentless barrage of shots from Maclay, which served to put the Marauders up 11-2 by the close of the first half.
Gulf Breeze’s starting goalie Cole Foster was out of the match against Maclay due to a self-inflicted injury suffered in the District Championship game against Pensacola Catholic, leaving him in need of two pins and 4-6 weeks of recovery according to a Facebook update.
The act was described by his mother, Nan-Evans Foster as an “emotionally-fueled punch to the goal” in a Facebook post last Saturday morning, along with a picture showing Foster waiting in the ER with a swollen and bruised hand.
Jared Pichard scored his second goal with five minutes left in the second quarter, one of 17 shots on target in the first half and number 10 on the night to go past backup goalie Nick Frye. Frye has posted a 40 percent save percentage on MaxPreps on the season compared to Foster’s 70 percent.
While blocking 40 out of the 110 shots on target is no small feat, it is not as impressive as stopping 67 out of the 95 shots Foster has. His experience might have given the team an edge against Maclay by supplying the cushion in goal the defense had all season, cutting down on the Marauder’s momentum.
The Dolphins came out swinging in the third quarter, finally managing to assemble an effective counter-attack with a much more physical defense – such as the diving tackle from Austin Rothfeder in the 28 minute that through Chad Minter’s shot off to the left of the far goal post.
Gulf Breeze looked like a different team in the final 25 minutes and the score line reflected it — holding Maclay to six goals in the second half compared with the 11 let through in the first. However, Gulf Breeze picked up a few too many penalties with sloppy checks and shooting space calls later into the half and set up the Marauders with a couple of crucial opportunities.
Despite the errors in the game, the Dolphins post an overall winning record of 11-3 for the season and 7-1 in District, including the fist-ever local district title in which only schools from the surrounding area competed.

The accomplishment sets a high bar for next year when Gulf Breeze will look to repeat as District Champions and improve on the team’s overall 96-8 record against Maclay.

Girls

The Lady Dolphins Lacrosse team rallied in the final moments of last Friday’s first round play-in match against Oak Hall High School with a goal from Avery Currington to cut the Lady Eagles’ lead to only two points, 7-5.
Megan Pewitt flicked a feed pass to Currington, who cut into the box and called for the pass before firing off a bounce shot that found the bottom right-hand corner of the goal.
The well-placed shot was Currington’s fourth goal of the night. She also placed two eight-meter shots on target, as well as putting a ball past the Oak Hall goalie when a feed from Kate Reagan Costello set her up for a driving shot in front of the crease.
In the third quarter it seemed like Gulf Breeze had just waited too long to attack and the team’s momentum broke before it built up any more of an impact. The Lady Dolphins did well to keep a strong defense up in a physical contest in which four yellow cards were shown.
The amount of fouls and location of the infractions awarded more than one opportunity that the Lady Eagles used to further their lead – including the eight-meter shot that Mason Yonge put passed Dolphin goalie Alanna Zambetti to make the score 7-3.
Zambetti has been the last resort for Gulf Breeze all season long and posted 11 saves on the night, doing all she could in front of attackers getting through the Lady Dolphins’ zone defense. Currington explained that the team was trying out a different, new defense that they had been saving for the playoff against Oak Hall.
“I mean, we played pretty good we saw each other – we just needed more possession,” Currington said after the match. “We went into the game with a brand new defense that we just started this week and I think we executed that well, I think we did good,” she said.
Currington believes that the team may have tried to cleanly execute some of their offensive plays in the first half a bit earlier to have tried and turned the tide of the match before it got out of reach, but did not blame the new defense.
“We have been preparing for Oak Hall all season and we have been doing a man-to-man but we went into a full new defense that is kind of like a zone – when we had our best defender out on every person on the ball, every time,” Currington said.
“It worked a lot better than the man-to-man and we learned it all in a week,” she said.
The Lady Dolphins end their season as the victors of the first-ever local District Championship and post an overall record of 14-6 and undefeated in conference play. The success reflects well on first-year head coach Carlee Costello, but the game marked the final match for 11 seniors on the Lady Dolphins roster.
“It means a lot some of us have been playing since elementary school,” Currington said. “I started in fifth grade with these same girls and 11 of them are graduating this year, so it’s going to be different … but it is still the same team.
“We’ve been preparing for this and we finally have our own district, it’s awesome,” she said.
Oak Hill advanced to the second round play-in against Stanton College Prepatory School on Tuesday and continued their post-season campaign with a 12-7 win. The Lady Eagles will play Bartram Trail High School in the third round play-in match on Saturday at 7 p.m. in hopes of advancing to the State Semifinals.