Pinkerton's win in D1 boys lacrosse final was a year in the making

NASHUA - Marty Auger might have been frustrated with the way his Pinkerton Academy boys lacrosse team lost the Division I championship game in 2025.

But at the end of the day, he could see the bigger picture, and although the Astros had earned the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, it felt like they were a year away from really being able to compete for a title.

As this regular season moved along, Auger and his coaching staff started to believe that maybe Pinkerton could do a little more than just compete.

“I’m aa truthsayer,” Auger said. “If you talk to any of my guys, I tell them the truth about them, good and bad. But all year long, we thought we were just a little bit better than the other guys, and it took a little while to buy in.

“Last year, we were very fortunate to be (in the final). We played well, we had a great record, and we were the No. 1 seed. But in reality, we knew that we were maybe one year away.”

Auger turned out to be right, as No. 2 Pinkerton held off No. 1 Bedford for a 17-16 win on June 13 to win the program's 13th championship. But as the final margin indicates, the other top teams in the division - the Bulldogs along with Bishop Guertin and Exeter - weren't that far off.

“All four of us could have been here and all four of us could have won,” Auger said. “We beat some really good teams.”

Pinkerton (18-3) got wins against three teams from Massachusetts - Hingham, Marshfield and Longmeadow, with won the state's Division II title - to go with in-state wins over Portsmouth, Exeter and Bishop Guertin twice, the first of which ended the Cardinals' 86-game in-state win streak.

But there was one game in particular that Auger felt got away from the Astros: a 14-11 loss to Bedford on May 21.

“We couldn’t have wrote the script any better,” he said. “If we could pick anybody to beat for the championship, what’s who we would, and to go through BG (in the semifinals), made it triple special.”

Getting revenge for that final a year ago - a 19-5 loss to the Cardinals in which they set a state record for most goals in a boys final - was something the players thought about all offseason.

“We evaluated what went wrong, went over film, and we slayed them twice this year,” Pinkerton junior Jackson Farrrell said of the wins over Bishop Guertin. “Then we came in here, and we knew what happened last year, and we weren’t letting that happen again. We came in here with that mindset that we were not losing.”

Farrell did his part late in the game, scoring two goals in the final minute to help the Astros turn a one-goal deficit into a one-goal lead with 20.5 seconds remaining.

But when Bedford got the final faceoff, and had plenty of time to tie the game, Farrell had faith in Pinkerton's defense to hold up.

“I saw they gave the ball to Bennett (Matthews),” Farrell said. “He’s a great player, and he’s going to be a great player (at Duke). Our whole defense has been amazing this year. We have Owen Perkins, who is the best goalie in the state, maybe even one of the top goalies in New England, in my eyes. I like my odds with Owen.”

Perkins rewarded that faith by making a save on Bedford's Bryce D'Urso just before time expired to clinch the title for Pinkerton.

“It means everything,” Perkins said. “I think it just means so much to bring it back to (Auger), too. You know, he left, he came back, and that was huge, to win it with him in his second year (as head coach).”

Auger was a longtime assistant for Brian O'Reilly, who stepped down as boys lacrosse coach after the Astros' previous championship season in 2019, but remains as the school's athletic director and football coach. After stepping away from coaching with Pinkerton for a few years, Auger returned when the head coach position opened up after the 2024 season.

“When Brian hired me, I told him that this was what I was going to do,” Auger said. “He sort of gives me free reign. I have the best coaching staff in all of New Hampshire, that’s not even debatable. When I was hired to do the job, I said that was our goal, and we accomplished that.”