La Salle passes St. Joseph’s Prep’s test, adds another PCL title to lineage

UPPER DARBY >> A grueling week of exams behind him, Luke Hreshko still had a serious test to pass Friday afternoon.

The La Salle senior goalie, earlier this week named the PCL’s MVP, had St. Joe’s Prep standout Mitch Lloyd bearing down on him after wining the opening face-off of the Catholic League title game. It was the exact scenario the Hawks had hoped for to seize some early momentum against their archrivals, but Hreshko wasn’t interested in that idea and stonewalled Lloyd.

Following their captain’s early example, the Explorers handled all the Prep threw at them to capture the PCL boys lacrosse title after a 10-3 win at Bonner & Prendergast.

“That’s big for our momentum, it just gets the team up and ready to go,” Hreshko said. “It’s huge, it’s always big but especially for our seniors, we didn’t get a season last year so we looked at it as a tribute to last year’s seniors as well to go out and be able to get this now we focus on moving on one game at a time.”

Friday’s title was the 24th overall for the program in the 27 years a PCL title has been awarded and the Explorers’ fifth straight with no title awarded due to the 2020 season being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For most of this year’s team, Friday was their first taste of a championship game and whether it was nerves, fatigue from a week of exams at school or the long ride from Wyndmoor down to Bonner-Prendie, La Salle came out a big discombobulated.

Fortunately, they had Hreshko to make that early save in the game’s opening seconds and Andrew Kelly to kick-start an otherwise sputtering attack. The junior attackman scored all three of his goals in the opening quarter as the Explorers found enough of a groove to open up a 4-1 lead that also saw the Prep burn both of its first half timeouts before the frame expired.

“We needed to settle down first, we were hectic in our offense and needed to get into our flow then we were able to get a lot of goals,” Kelly, a first team All-PCL pick, said. “It feels awesome to get a hat trick, we all worked so hard for it, so it all feels awesome.”

Outside of his chance off the opening draw, Lloyd didn’t get a lot of quality looks on goal thanks to La Salle’s defense and specifically Matt Wills. The long-stick defensive midfielder spent most of the afternoon trying to lock up Lloyd and helped hold the junior Maryland recruit scoreless.

Wills deflected credit to the entire defensive unit and whether it was as a group or individually, the Explorers defense played an excellent game against a potent and patient Hawks offense. Poles Paul Jennings, Will Pickering, Henry Troy and short-stick defensive mids Colin Wakefield and Ryan Moore plus the guys involved in the ride kept the Prep from finding much success.

“(Lloyd) was really strong with his right hand, so I just tried to stay on his right hand and made it tough for him to go left, I feel like I did OK in the first half but figured it out in the second half and we locked him up pretty well,” Wills, who was a first-team All-PCL LSM, said. “They did a lot of picks and switches, so our communication was very important and we did a good job with that working through it.”

La Salle coach Rob Forster added his first PCL title as a coach to the two he won as a player with the Explorers in 2004 and 2005. While Forster is technically in his second year heading up his alma mater’s team, he too lost out on the 2020 season and has marshaled a team that started the season talented but inexperienced to a championship.

Forster noted the score didn’t reflect the Prep’s effort and cited how difficult it was for his attackers to get past the Hawks’ poles and mids on defense and the amount of work his defensive group had to do.

“Our offense struggled at times and that’s because their defense played great,” Forster said. “They’re tough, their goalies played well. We just struggled beating guys in our one-on-one matchups, they were physical at the point of attack and we had to work really hard to get past the first guy, draw some slides and move the ball.”

Kelly didn’t score after the first quarter but La Salle has thrived all season relying on different players to get goals. Charlie Huntley and Mason Lasasz also notched hat tricks while Franky Fix doled a trio of assists and Jack Pilling, who put in a lot of work on offense, defense and in the ride, had the Explorers’ other goal.

Pilling’s goal with 43.9 left in the second quarter started a sequence that gave La Salle plenty of juice going to the break. Stevie Davis, who was excellent dueling with Lloyd on the faceoff X, came up with the ensuing draw and Fix found Lasasz as the senior rushed onto the field and unleashed a laser for a second goal in a 23-second span that gave La Salle a 7-1 lead at intermission.

“We have a lot of offensive sets and plays we work on in practice every day, we just have to keep getting them down,” Kelly said. “We’ve switched our attack up a lot, we’re kind of playing a four-midfielder offense right now and that adjustment has been huge.”

The Prep tried to rally in the third quarter, cutting the lead to 8-3 before La Salle’s attack stemmed the tide with a defensive play. After the initial shot was saved, Jack Vandergrift pressured the clearing defenseman into losing the ball with Huntley gathering the ground ball and scoring.

Lasasz capped his hat trick in the fourth quarter on an absolute rocket of a shot from 15 yards out and the Explorers closed out the win to extend their streak of PCL titles. While he saw it from a different vantage point, it was a similar feeling for Forster as he watched his players surge onto the field in celebration.

“I’m just excited for them, especially not having a chance to play for this last year, some of the seniors last year who didn’t get to play were here, so we wanted them to be able experience it,” Forster said. “It’s not really any different, it’s always exciting to be a part of.”

Hreshko and his teammates still have more planned for this season, one they hope ends with a state title. Friday however, the PCL’s MVP held the league’s trophy while sitting on the ground surrounded by his teammates, simply enjoying the moment.

“We all had a long week in the classroom so we were looking forward to getting out in the sun and flying around,” Hreshko said. “I still felt butterflies, believe it or not. I was excited to get it and be able to hold it up in front of the whole team.”

LA SALLE 10, ST. JOSEPH’S PREP 4
LA SALLE 4 3 2 1 – 10
ST. JOSEPH’S PREP 1 0 2 1 – 4
Goals-Assists: L – Andrew Kelly 3-0, Charlie Huntley 3-0, Mason Lasasz 3-0, Jack Vandergrift 0-2, Franky Fix 0-3; SJP – Ryan Gaffney 3-0, Grant Snyder 1-0