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Canfield lacrosse knocks off Mooney, 5-4

Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. Canfield’s Ethan Remby scores a goal early in the fourth quarter Tuesday evening against Cardinal Mooney.

CANFIELD — Prior to this spring, neither the Canfield or Cardinal Mooney boys lacrosse programs faced off against one another.

That all changed this season as they faced off twice during the regular season and their season-long series even included a third meeting Tuesday during the first round of the Division II Region 6 bracket.

Mooney may have scored with time expiring, but when the final buzzer rang, Canfield was the victor on its home field with a 5-4 win.

Canfield didn’t just beat Mooney for the second time of the year after losing at home during the first encounter — they advanced to the second round of the regional tournament for the first time in program history.

Lessons learned in the earlier loss paid dividends as the season progressed.

“A lot of the teams try to run zone against us, because we know we’re not very good at that, so we’ve been trying to better ourselves to beat that zone on defense,” Canfield coach Gordan Burns said following the win. “We’ve been trying to move the ball faster than attack the weak parts of the zone on defense. We had a really good practice, we were doing it and then we would just stall out in a game and couldn’t put it together.”

Mooney did find the scoreboard first following a Todd Miller score, but their lead would only last a hair over eight minutes when Canfield junior Luke Berry knotted the contest up at a goal a piece with 9.4 seconds to go in the first frame.

Berry, who’s in his first year with the program, has quickly adjusted to his new team, scoring a game-high two goals and an assist in the historic playoff win Tuesday evening.

“Me and Nicolo (Cocca) are always just looking for each other, we’re both big shooters, so when we have the ball we’re looking to shoot or pass to each other and we know one of us will put it in the net,” Berry said. “It’s not just some team traveling from an hour and a half away and you don’t really have any rivalry against them.

“I just moved here so I don’t really know what these guys have gone through the last couple of years, but it’s awesome to make history.”

Cocca found Dylan Kemp on a well-designed play moments before intermission to take a 2-1 edge on the scoreboard into the locker room. Mooney’s Will Varley tied everything up at two early in the third quarter, but Berry found Cocca for a score with 4:15 to go in the quarter from about ten feet out.

The plays right before the buzzer seemed to be Canfield’s strength Tuesday, with Berry increasing the lead to 4-2 with 59.9 to go in the third. Mooney’s Joey Sfara replied less than ten seconds later following the face-off to cut the deficit down to one.

Despite there not being a massive goal differential, Canfield played on the attack for much of the evening at times, going up two once more with an Ethan Remby score.

Mooney’s Joe Zeno did find the back of the net with the final buzzer, but it was too little, too late.

No. 12 Canfield (9-8) moves on to face No. 1 Chagrin Falls on Friday. Canfield goalkeeper Peyton Nottingham tallied 11 saves.

“(Chagrin) is a really good team, we just need to hunker down and get our basics down and hope for the best,” Cocca said.

It’s never the ending that any team hopes for, but Cardinal Mooney coach (7-8) Chris Joss knows how difficult it is seeing a team that third time.

“We wanted them, we had the choice to have a home game or come back here and play at Canfield and I wanted to play Canfield. The kids like it, it’s fun, bigger crowd, we know who they are, we didn’t execute,” Joss explained following the loss. “Tonight’s game, it’s a matter of ground balls, they got them and we didn’t, they possessed the ball a lot longer than we did. Defense kept them in the game tonight, but they could only do so much, got to put the ball in the goal and we were having trouble.”

sports@vindy.com

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