Birtwistle leads a special victory for Radnor’s senior class

MIDDLETOWN — In 2015, a group of eighth graders watched the Radnor High boys varsity lacrosse team win the PIAA championship.

They didn’t know at the time that they would be members of Radnor’s senior class before the school would be celebrating another victory in a PIAA tournament game.

Junior Jackson Birtwistle scored five goals in helping all those Radnor seniors earn a 14-4 victory over District 3’s third-place team, Hempfield, in the opening round of the Class 3A tournament at Penncrest’s Louis W. Scott Stadium Tuesday afternoon.

The Raiders (17-6), who finished third in District 1, will play a quarterfinal round contest Saturday vs. District 7 runner-up Mt. Lebanon, which got past District 3 champion Palmyra, 10-9, in a weather-shortened game Tuesday.

“This has been awesome,” said senior defender Kieran Sheridan, who helped limit Hempfield (17-6) to one goal in the first three periods – and that goal came 29 seconds into the game. We were really pointing toward this game. We expected that they would come out and try to go after us.”

Bryce Witmer scored for the Black Knights after 29 seconds had been played. By the end of the first period, Radnor was ahead, 5-1. At halftime, the Raiders were on top, 9-1, and by the end of the third period it was 14-1.

The second Hempfield tally didn’t come until the opening minute of the fourth period.

“Their offense works hard,” said Sheridan, who will play football at Middlebury College. “They have some good dodgers, so we knew what we had to work on to be ready for them.”

Birtwistle opened the scoring for Radnor. After John Austen got two of his three goals, Birtwistle scored again. Jack Dooley’s goal late in the opening period gave the Raiders a 5-1 edge at the first break.

Austen, Birtwistle, Drew Brown and David Azzarano were Radnor’s goal scorers in the second period.

“We expected this to be a high intensity game,” said Birtwistle, who plans to play at Marquette University after his Radnor graduation in 2020. “We shared the ball well on offense.”

Raiders senior goalie Archer Darrach stopped seven shots and gave up only one goal before giving way to sophomore Robert Hobbs in the final period.

“We have some great shooters on this team, and they got me ready for this game,” said Darrach, who didn’t get into playing lacrosse until he was an eighth grader. “And some of the guys on our team play club (lacrosse) with some of their players and knew what to expect from them.

“Our defense has become really close on and off the field. That helps us in working together. Communication is such a big thing for us. We’ve worked really hard and resolved any issues that might have come up. Getting to this point of the season has been because we’ve been able to work things out and pull together if anything happened to us.”

Senior Drew Brown set up Austen’s first goal and added a goal in the third period.

“We knew we’d be in states after we beat Springfield last week,” said Brown, who will play at Dickinson. “Beating Springfield was special for us. But it’s also special now to have won a game in states. It was interesting playing against some of their guys who had been my teammate on a club team.

“Now we have a few days to get ready to play our next game. It’s great that we’ll be going on in states.”

Junior Jaden Goldstein joined classmate Birtwistle with two goals in the third period for Radnor, which also got contributions from midfielders Taylor Margolis, Grant Pierce, and Cole Schwartz as well as defender Ryan Bernicker in holding down the Hempfield attack.