With Damian Leech absent, Alistair Hearmon (centre) stepped in as team captain, and earned player of the day.
Cambridge High School’s boys’ lacrosse team went up against Te Awamutu on Sunday, hoping to redeem themselves following a 5-6 loss in June. Both teams were missing a key player – TA’s Dalton Hargreaves and Cambridge captain Damian Leech – but they persevered nonetheless, defending each other’s attacks so well that the score remained at 0-0 for the first third of the game.
“That was the first time this has happened with any of anyone’s games this season, which goes to show how closely matched and how skilful both teams are playing,” said Cambridge coach Anthony Warrington. “Defensively, this was our best game of the season.”
After a player was sent off, the Cambridge team managed to hold off the TA players for two minutes with a man down. “I thought the tie-breaker would come then,” said Warrington, “but our team played a fantastic man-down zone-based defence and held Te Awamutu off for the whole two minutes.”
The Cambridge team dominantly moved the ball with several opportunities for the goal, “but unfortunately we just couldn’t hit the target,” said Warrington. “I lost count of how many shots we had. We’re definitely going to need to do some shooting practice at training.”
The Te Awamutu players managed to sneak the ball past the defence a few times to finish up with a 3-0 victory, “but the game was so close that it could have gone either way,” said Warrington.
“In the absence of our captain, Alistair Hearmon (player of the day) really stepped up and communicated well with the team to set up our defence. His one-on-one defence was outstanding, and he held TA’s dodgers off numerous times. He got many turn-overs for Cambridge, which led to a lot of offensive opportunities for us too.”
This Sunday the Cambridge team will play St Johns, who are placed at the bottom of the table, at 4pm at the Hamilton Inline Hockey Centre, Old Farm Rd, Hamilton. “I am hoping to get some of our younger, less experienced players as much game time as possible for this game, before we go into the final few weeks of the season,” said Warrington.
