Score early, score often. That was the strategy the Burr and Burton Academy Bulldogs employed en route to a thorough thumping of Stowe in last week’s Division 2 boys’ lacrosse semifinal game.
Third-seeded Burr and Burton beat No. 2 Stowe 22-11, and the game wasn’t even as close as the score suggests. The Bulldogs roared out to a 4-0 lead in the first few minutes of the game and never looked back. Even when Stowe managed to score, Burr and Burton came right back with a goal or two of its own.
The day after the semifinal, Burr and Burton played No. 4 Burlington, which had upset top-seeded Rice 13-12.
Burr and Burton won the title 13-12, its second straight state championship.
It was the second straight year in which Burr and Burton beat Stowe and then won the state title. Stowe lost quarterfinal games to U-32 in 2013 and to Colchester in 2012 — the first season in which Stowe had a boys’ varsity lacrosse team.
Harry Colyer scored Stowe’s first goal with just over four minutes left in the first quarter, but Burr and Burton finished the opening frame with a 4-2 run. The second quarter was even more lopsided than the first, and Burr and Burton led 14-5 at halftime.
Two players scored three goals each for Stowe — Colyer and Graham Kramer — and Colyer also had two assists. Trent Gutstein contributed a pair of goals and an assist; Connor Loughran scored two and Chad Haggerty had one goal and an assist.
But Burr and Burton had six players with hat tricks, including whatever you call a 7-goal outing, which is what Burr and Burton’s Tom Morgaratini had. For Morgaratini, that scoring flurry constituted career goals 100 through 106.
Stowe came alive a bit more in the second half, and even outscored Burr and Burton 3-2 in the fourth quarter. By that time, though — after a third quarter in which Burr and Burton outscored Stowe 6-3 — the Bulldogs were in the driver’s seat and resting their starters.
Raiders coach Mike Loughran said Stowe doesn’t play well coming from behind, and in the semifinal it was never not behind.
Loughran’s wife, Jill, coaches the Lady Raiders lacrosse team. The No. 5 Stowe girls beat top-seeded Green Mountain Valley School in the semifinal, but fell to Woodstock 8-7 in the title match at Castleton State College.
“My wife and I have an ongoing bet” on whose team will go the furthest in the playoffs, Loughran said after the boys’ semifinal loss. “I paid for dinner tonight.”
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