Strong 4th quarter sends La Salle to 20th PCL title

SPRINGFIELD >> The La Salle College High School lacrosse team has won many a Philadelphia Catholic League championship – 19 entering Tuesday’s showdown with rival St. Joseph’s Prep.

And most have come through dazzling stick skills, brilliant offense and  what most would call “playing pretty.”

But entering the fourth quarter Tuesday, the Explorers had a one-goal lead, had been blanked in the third quarter and required another element of their game to attain championship No. 20.

Prior to the start of the final period, the Explorers huddled and decided they would do what was necessary – and what was necessary was slugging it out in the trenches.

“We knew what we had to do,” said Cody Mazurek. “And our feeling was, no matter what it was going to take, that’s what we were going to do.”

So the Explorers took off the kid gloves, scored four unanswered goal to open the period, and coasted home with a 9-5 victory.

Mazurek and Matt Clibanoff led the way with three goals apiece as the Explorers got a little dirty, but prevailed nonetheless.

“We don’t measure things in revenge,” said Explorers head coach Bill Leahy, recalling last year when the favorites were upset in the finals by the Prep,“but when you win 20 out of 25 championships, it’s nice to see it come home.

“It was very different from our first game with them this year. That was like, 13-9, or something. We knew tonight was going to be a battle.”

The contest began slowly as both sides were in probe mode early.

Matt Clibanoff changed that with a bullet from the wing at 6:48 that put the home team on top, and Cody Mazurek doubled the lead at the 4:09 mark.

Stymied throughout the first period, the Hawks tied it less than four minutes into the second period as Pete Gayhardt and Kevin Stump scored 38 seconds apart.

But the remainder of the half belonged to the Explorers, who went up, 5-2, on goals by Chris Hladczuk, Clibanoff and Mazurek.

And only a tally by Prep’s Griffin Fleming with the half’s final 1:36 kept the Hawks within range.

Stump’s goal pulled the Prep within a goal midway through the third.

The score stayed that way through three, but La Salle decided there was no way it was going to end that way.

“In the third quarter we didn’t play very well,” Clibanoff said. “We all looked at each other, knew what we were thinking and we came out confident.”

That confidence turned into goals as the  Explorers put it away the arly stages of the fourth quarter as Mazurek, Hladczuk, Clibanoff and Kyle Landis blew the lead out to 9-4, and the Prep could only muster an Alex Scalamandre goal in the final minutes.

As the clock ticked down, the Explorers were jumping up and down with the thrill of victory.

It was a victory they’d grabbed in an unaccustomed way.

But it was still a victory.

As for the Prep, the Hawks had it in their reach, but some early faux pas in the final stanza spelled its doom.

“We couldn’t be more prepared coming in here,” said head coach Sean DeLaney, “but we didn’t execute a few times in the fourth quarter, we had some sloppy turnovers and a team like La Salle is going to capitalize on that.”