The lonely voice shouted an imploring shout.
“We still got time,” it said. The voice came from somewhere on the Wall sideline, with 6 minutes left, with Wall trailing Westfield by 3 goals. Plenty of time, the voice, and logic, said.
It just didn’t feel that way.
It really didn’t feel that way when, moments after the hopeful shout, Westfield’s Cody Lam nonchalantly sidearmed a shot into the top corner. Lam’s goal effectively sealed the game, as No. 10 Westfield (4-3, 2-2 NJILL Fitch-Pitt) sucked the life out of No. 13 Wall (5-3, 4-0 Shore), 8-4, overcoming an early raft of mistakes to erase the sting of Saturday’s disheartening blowout loss against No. 2 Seton Hall Prep.
“We were pretty amped up after a big loss,” Lam said. He spoke postgame as, around him, teammates munched on sandwiches. Chicken cutlet and Italian. Ample reward for a solid win.
“All of us wanted to bounce back,” continued Lam, who scored 4 goals. “Don’t like to keep big losses like that in our system. Just like to flush it out, move on to the next one.”
But the flushing and the moving on dawdled a bit. Westfield foundered early on Monday, typical sharpness replaced by dullness, simple mistakes taking over. Wall ripped off three early goals and blanked Westfield in the first quarter.
Then the corrosive sloppiness vanished. Westfield dominated the rest of the game, in every phase. Danny Hazard controlled the faceoffs, delivering possession after possession to Westfield’s humming offense. Wall scarcely touched the ball for long stretches.
“After you score,” head coach William Wertheimer said, “they can’t get the ball. You can ‘make it, take it,’ with Danny at the faceoff X.”
Hazard, though, encountered a minor obstacle. Wall plays on a grass field, an oddity for high school lacrosse. The change of surface proved disconcerting—slightly.
“Ball was bouncing differently,” Hazard said. “So it made ground balls right after the initial scrum a little more difficult.”
Thinking of grass fields might, for most high schoolers, conjure up uneasy memories of spotty, rocky patches. Not Wall’s field. It’s well-maintained, verdant, soft, cut low. And Hazard adjusted fairly quickly.
“Once you got in that groove and started playing those bounces,” he said, “it became easier. Instead of trying to make it a ground ball, I tried popping it to myself more, trying to make it easier for me after the initial whistle.”
Yet even for Hazard’s dominance, the teams arrived at the fourth quarter separated by only two goals. Precarious.
As Hazard and his counterpart knelt for the faceoff to commence the last quarter, the sun, battling clouds all day, poked through. Light bathed the field, nature’s spotlight illuminating a crucial fourth quarter.
Nature’s spotlight disappeared quickly. Nothing to see here. Just a team dispatching a tough but inferior opponent.
Westfield even suffered through the absence of Ryan Waldman, the attacker who on Saturday aggravated a lingering ankle injury. He sat on Monday. He’ll sit again on Wednesday, for Westfield’s 4 p.m. game at Scotch Plains-Fanwood. He might appear for Saturday’s game against No. 18 Chatham.
But without Waldman it was Lam. Or it was goalie Quinn Wojcik. Or it was a formidable defense. Or it was Hazard, who added a goal to his faceoff success.
All after that rough start.
“We had a long bus ride,” Wertheimer said. “We had a really short warmup, and our legs weren’t warm. So when you come off, you’re a little slow, and they’ve had a full warmup, they put three on us.”
The bus ride is, indeed, rather long, a 43.3-mile trek. But the undershirts that stick out from beneath Westfield’s jerseys deliver a simple message, spelled out in big capital letters: “NO EXCUSES.”
Westfield didn’t make any on Monday, at least not during the game. Not for the grass. Not for the warmup.
The Blue Devils reversed a sloppy, stumbling first quarter into a clean, crisp final three.
“This was a great win for us,” Hazard said. “Kind of set the tone for what’s to come in the week.”
