Cortland Standard .net

By TANEY BEAUMONT
Staff Writer
The Cortland High boys’ lacrosse team gave visiting Jamesville-DeWitt everything it wanted well into the second quarter Friday afternoon on Moiseichik Field.
Then the Red Rams took things over in a big way.
The Purple Tigers trailed 2-0 after the first 12 minutes before junior midfielder Joe Piedigrossi halved that deficit with the first of his two goals in the game 1:48 into the second quarter. From there, though, it was all J-D, the visitors scoring seven goals in 5:26 to go up 9-1 with 2:05 left in the first half, padding the lead to 11-1 at halftime and scoring the first two goals of the third quarter for a 13-1 advantage in what ended up an 18-6 win.
The triumph was the Red Rams’ fifth in as many contests this season — all on the road due to weather-related home-field difficulties — and their third in four days.
It was also the first OHSL Freedom American Division game of the spring for the six-time defending Section 3 Class B champions while Cortland fell to 1-1 in the Freedom National and 1-2 overall.
“They’re a little better fundamentally than us,” Purple Tigers coach Matt Blaich said. “We ran with them in the first quarter, but a few mistakes led to goals for them. I told the kids at halftime to keep their heads up, that they could run with J-D, which they showed in the first five or 10 minutes. They were just more fundamentally sound than we were in the first half. We started out a little too slow, and you can’t do that against teams like J-D.”
“I think we had good shots in the first quarter, and their goalie (sophomore Cameron Aldrich) made some good saves,” Red Rams coach Jamie Archer said. “In the second we started executing and finishing our shots. We had a late game last night (a 7-6 overtime win at Cazenovia), and there was a little layover from that early. But I thought we did a good job of rallying after that.
“I was surprised by our margin; that’s something you don’t know about coming in. We’d had some tough games, but you can’t tell how well you’re doing (early in the season). Tonight we played well; in the second half and overtime last night and in this game we moved the ball the best we have all year. Winning all these road games is a good sign; we don’t have too many home games this year.”
A prime beneficiary of that ball movement was J-D’s Ben Wipper, who scored three goals in the game and now has seven this season.
“I think our offense is coming together as a whole,” the senior midfielder said. “There was a lot of ball movement. It’s all starting to come together a little bit. We were excited to play today; we’re tired from this week but we’ve worked hard in practice so we were physically ready.
“I’m glad we were able to score as many goals as we did; that shows that we’re coming together offensively. We just have to keep working hard.”
Another offensive standout for the Red Rams was sophomore attack Ryan Archer, the coach’s son, who scored the first two goals of the long string after Cortland had made it 2-1, and assisted on the next tally, but senior midfielder Matt Murad.
Archer finished with two goals and two assists while senior attacks Alex Dieroff and Anthony Cacchione each had two goals and two assists. Murad, freshman attack Griffin Cook and junior midfielder Anthony DiGiovanni scored two goals apiece, with junior attack Grayson Burns and sophomore midfielder Andrew Barkley adding a goal and an assist apiece and junior attack Charlie Digristina scoring once.
In addition to Piedigrossi’s two goals, which gave him five on the season, single goals for Cortland came from junior midfielder Bronson Gagliano (who now has four this spring), senior midfielder Mike May (his first of the season), sophomore defenseman Damon Carr (his first, assisted by classmate and fellow defenseman Harold Pallone) and Mike’s twin brother Matt May, a senior attack who leads CHS in goals with nine and points with 12.
With a good number of players on both teams getting playing time, Cortland was outscored by only 7-5 in the second half, including a 3-3 fourth quarter.
The winners had a 23-24 shot advantage. Aldrich made nine saves while senior Joe Morgan made five saves in the first half for the Red Rams. Senior Charlie Palin stopped three shots in the third quarter while junior Dylan Fleischman (two saves) and junior Patrick Gillson (no saves) both saw time between the pipes in the fourth quarter.
“We can only learn from this,” Blaich said. “We were able to give our sophomores — Cameron, Damon and Harold — some game experience. No it’s time to get ready for New Hartford.”
The Purple Tigers were to host the Spartans at noon today on Moiseichik Field, trying to avenge a season-opening 12-9 road loss on April 2.