Lehman’s 4 goals help Wissahickon top CB East in matchup of SOL unbeatens

LOWER GWYNEDD >> Things were going well enough for the Wissahickon boys lacrosse team by the second quarter that the Trojans’ Nick Donofrio was on the ground and still found a way to score.

“That was pretty awesome,” Wissahickon senior Kyle Lehman said. “I saw that, I was yelling ‘double team.’ He fell to the ground I guess. He thought he had a shot, which he did, which was pretty awesome.”

Seated on the turf, Donofrio opted to let loose a shot that found the back of the net with 3:26 remaining until halftime. Lehman added his third tally of Tuesday’s matchup with Central Bucks East just 56 seconds later as a three-goal run sent the Trojans into the break leading 7-1.

Wissahickon opened the third quarter with four straight goals and went on to roll past the Patriots 11-3 to win the meeting between unbeaten defending Suburban One League conference champions.

“I feel like this team really plays up to our competition,” Lehman said. “If we’re going to play a good team in the future I feel like this team has the potential to just ride with those good teams and just have a good dogfight throughout the games.”

Lehman, a Penn State commit, finished with four goals and three assists, Donofrio and Andrew Slackman both scored three times  while Slackman dished out a pair of assists for the Trojans (6-0, 2-0 SOL American). Dominic Kemper won 13-of-18 faceoffs while sophomore goalie Kyle Crump made five saves.

“They got really good athletes every single year and we just really executed well,” Wissahickon coach Matt Conway said. “Our faceoff guy, Dom, was huge today, our goalie made a couple really good saves so it was just really going for us well.

Lehman and Slackman combined to give the Trojans a strong start – Slackman scoring the first two goals off Lehman assists with Slackman returning the favor in providing the helper on Lehman’s strike that made it 3-0 at 6:17 in the opening quarter.

“Over quarantine, him and I, every single day we’d come to this turf and just shoot,” Lehman said. “So we have a little bit of a dynamic going and we got some chemistry that built up over the years. We’ve been playing since we were in kindergarten together.”

A Lehman goal had the Trojans up 4-0 at 10:08 in the second quarter before Thomas Williams put Central Bucks East (5-1, 3-0 SOL National) on the scoreboard at 8:12 in the period. But the Patriots did not register another goal until a Matthew Bowen tally with a minute left in the third made it 11-2.

“We definitely focused on our defense because I wouldn’t say that’s a weak spot but definitely not our strong suit,” Lehman said. And we definitely dialed that in. The three days leading up to this game, all we worked on was defense – scouting their best players, what they run and we actually switched up some of our defensive game plan which is awesome. So definitely more of a defensive game plan than offensive.”

Williams scored twice for the Patriots, who had posted at least eight goals in its first five games. East is home against Council Rock North 4 p.m. Thursday. Wissahickon does not play again until Thursday, April 13 when it hosts Upper Moreland at 5 p.m.

“We’re 6-0 but really didn’t know what to expect cause we were losing a lot, especially defensively,” Conway said. “But basically offense has been our best defense almost. The defense has played really well, our new goalie, Kyle Crump, it’s his first year, he’s been well. Faceoffs have been going pretty well. We’ve been doing well but we know it’s a long season.”

After Williams’ goal cut Wissahickon’s lead to 4-1, Gavin Myers put the Trojans back up four by collecting a rebound in front and scoring with 5:00 to go before halftime.

Donofrio, a Salisbury commit, proceeded to make it 6-1 as he connected on his shot from the ground at 3:26.

“That was not how we drew it up,” Conway said. “He drew a slide, actually afterwards we were like just move it forward. It was a highlight-reel goal, a no, no, yes type of goal there.”

Lehman scored his third of the game at 2:36 to send the Trojans into halftime up six.

In the third quarter, a Slackman interception led to a Donofrio tally at 9:42. Slackman completed his hat trick at 7:05 with Donofrio doing the same at 5:43 to extend Wissahickon’s advantage to 10-1.

“I think that was the win in faceoffs really, that kind of started to wear them down a little bit,” Conway said. “So Dom, he did an incredible job. He enabled us to be able to kind of wear them down.”

Lehman notched his fourth goal off a Slackman assist to put the Trojans ahead 10 with 3:46 left in the third.