Pelham boys lacrosse snaps Hopkinton's 42-game win streak with a victory (video)

PELHAM - The Pelham High School boys lacrosse team may have gone into Friday's game against Hopkinton undefeated, having won its seven previous games by an average of 13 goals.

But that didn't mean there weren't nerves for the Pythons going up against the two-time defending champion Hawks.

After getting out the jitters in an even first quarter, Pelham took the lead in the second and extended it in the third, holding on for a 9-5 win over Hopkinton in a matchup of Division III unbeatens.

The loss for the Hawks ends their 42-game winning streak, which dates back to the end of the 2016 season and had been the second-longest active streak in the country.

"The guys played hard in all facets of the game," Pelham coach Will DeLanoy said. "The defense was great. Jaxon Snyder in the net, making crazy saves, standing on his head. Transition game was awesome. We had a lot of transition. Guys were playing unselfish, pushing the ball when they should."

It took a while for Pelham (8-0, ARV in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) to get going, as Hopkinton scored the game's first two goals in the first minute of the game. But once the Pythons settled in, they scored twice to tie the game going into the second and put up four more goals, including one by Mason Fecteau that gave Pelham a 3-2 lead just 1:45 into the quarter and seemed to swing momentum.

"When Mason’s shot went in, we got comfortable, once we got the jitters out," Pelham junior Charlie Katin said. "We let in two (goals) fast. They’ve been the best team. We just started to click."

Ian Morgenstern led Pelham with three goals while Katin and Fecteau finished with two goals and an assist each. Devyn Tucci and Shawn McAdams added a goal and an assist apiece and Jaxon Snyder made 11 saves, five of which came in the fourth quarter when Hopkinton (8-1, No. 9) tried to come back.

Paul Molnar led the Hawks with three goals and Colby Quiet had three assists while Nick Higginbotham and Allan Faulkner had a goal apiece. Benny Madden finished with 23 saves for Hopkinton.

"We played a good game, but we had some missed opportunities on clears and on offense," Hopkinton coach Deacon Blue said. "I think defensively, we played great. Benny Madden was on fire in the net, but we just couldn’t convert on offense and couldn’t capitalize on our possessions.

"We turned it over too often. A couple of caught feeds and finished goals, we were doing a lot of the normal things we do to create goals, if we just finished, I think it could have gone the other way."

Pelham went up 6-2 on a goal by Fecteau with 5:08 to go in the first half but Faulkner scored with 1:31 left to cut the lead to three going into halftime. It stayed that way until Katin and Morgenstern scored 51 seconds apart to make it 8-3 with 6:39 left in the third.

Hopkinton looked like it might pick up some momentum when Molnar scored with 50.3 seconds left in the quarter, but despite having possession for most of the fourth, the Hawks weren't able to get any closer.

The Hawks took 12 shots in the final quarter, but only half of those went on net, with Snyder stopping all but one.

"It really was just staying disciplined on defense," DeLanoy said. "We reminded them that we’d been successful doing the things we needed to be doing and we didn’t need to do anything outside of that. I think they bought into that and we got the result that we were looking for."