Portsmouth boys lacrosse holds off Timberlane to win first D2 title (video)

BEDFORD - It was a moment that Chad Vischer was waiting for all his life, but the Portsmouth High School boys lacrosse coach didn't feel the way he thought he would.

Instead of excitement, the immediate feeling Vischer felt was relief.

After knocking on the door of a championship for some time, the Clippers finally broke through Saturday night, controlling possession and playing solid defense in a 9-6 win over Timberlane in the Division II title game at Bedford High School.

It's the first title for Portsmouth after three previous trips to the championship game, including 2017 and 2018, and a moment that's been a long time coming for Vischer.

"I feel more relief than I do excitement," the coach said. "I’ve been at this for a long time and I’ve never won a thing. I’ve never won, so to win is like finally. And to take the path that we did, I’m happy. We played the best teams and I’m proud of us."

Zac Amend and Michael O'Neil each had three goals to lead the Clippers (19-1, No. 7 in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) while Mike Durkin scored two goals and Dylan Roelofs added a goal and two assists. Houston Heidinger had two assists and Skyler Mikolaities made five saves.

Perhaps Portsmouth's biggest performance of the day came from freshman Nick Smith, who helped the Clippers go 16 of 18 on faceoffs.

"Nick is just a freshman and he’s killing every kid out there on faceoffs," Durkin said. "It’s amazing. He comes out of no where and starts winning every faceoff and it’s amazing.

"Our defense has been playing so well the whole season. They’ve really kept us in a lot of games. For the first half of the season, our average goals against us was like three. They’ve been playing so well all season. We were trying to possess the ball and give our defense a break."

Heading into the game, Portsmouth allowed an average of 4.3 goals per game and only once allowed more than seven. That included holding the Owls (11-8, ARV) to five goals combined in two games during the regular season.

"Timberlane gave us everything we could handle and I thought so, we expected that," Vischer said. "It helped that we got up early and they got themselves collected. They play great. The changes they were capable of doing in the past eight weeks, or since I saw them, it’s awesome."

Portsmouth jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first quarter before Timberlane came back to tie it in the second. But the Owls scored just twice, on goals by Braidon Bowman, in the second half.

"They’ve got a good defense and a good goalie," Timberlane coach Ken Blaszka said. "We played our game, so I really can’t complain. Where we started to where we are now, there are a lot of things we do. They’re good, they posses the ball, they don’t drop it much. We knew that."

Eric George, Ryan Freeman, Nick Matthews and Nathan Vibber also had a goal apiece for the Owls while Brady Marston made nine saves.

Roelofs started the scoring for Portsmouth with 7:24 left in the first quarter and the junior assisted on a goal by O'Neil just seven seconds later to make it 2-0.

The teams traded shots and possession after that until it looked like the Owls would have a chance on a manup opportunity. Instead, Timberlane turned the ball over and O'Neil scored with the Clippers down a man to make it 3-0 with 37.3 left in the quarter.

But Freeman would get the goal back with eight-tenths of a second to go in the first, and the Owls were able to capitalize on their next manup, getting a goal from George to make it 3-2. Vibber tied the game with 7:27 to go in the second, but it didn't take long for Portsmouth to go back in front.

O'Neil scored his third goal with 6:04 left in the half and Amend got his first just 1:09 later, giving Portsmouth a 5-3 lead that it took into halftime.

"That was massive," Durkin said. "If we didn’t get those goals, I think it would have been a completely different game. We took away all their energy right there. We increased the lead so that they couldn’t just get a lucky goal or lucky bounce."

But Timberlane got just that in the third quarter, as pass by Bowman hit off a Portsmouth player's stick and found the back of the net, cutting the lead to 5-4. Amend put the Clippers back up by two with 2:32 to go in the third and Durkin scored early in the fourth to give Portsmouth a 7-4 lead.

Bowman got another goal with 5:39 left to get the Owls back within two, but another faceoff win by the Clippers led to a goal by Amend 48 seconds later and Durkin added another with 3:14 left to make it 9-5.

"You defend them by scoring goals and we didn’t score goals," Blaszka said. "If we score more than five or six, we’re not giving up nine. If you look at the time of possession in a game like (Saturday), they had the ball a ton. Give me five (faceoffs) and think about what we can do."