Windham boys lacrosse picks up much-needed win over St. Thomas (video)

WINDHAM - The Windham High School boys lacrosse team has had an unofficial tradition going this season.

The Jaguars start games slow, feeling out what the opponent is like, before picking it up sometime late in the first quarter or early in the second. It's a tradition that Windham coach Joe Young would like to see his team stop, but on Friday, the Jaguars were able to overcome it.

Down 2-0 through the first six-plus minutes, Windham held St. Thomas to just two goals the rest of the way and gutted out a 7-4 win over the Saints in a Division II game.

Coming off a one-goal loss to Portsmouth on Wednesday, and knowing the Saints had also lost to the Clippers by a goal earlier in the year, the Jaguars felt they would match up well against St. Thomas.

"It’s almost traditional Windham lacrosse," Young said of the start. "We want to wait on our heels until we see what they’re capable of and then go, as opposed to just playing our game and going. It was a little bit more of that.

"Wednesday, we put together a complete game and we were riding off that (Friday). This is obviously a team that also had a one-goal battle with Portsmouth. They’re pretty even with us in the field. We knew kind of how we wanted to play them and we executed it."

Parker Rice led Windham (6-5) with three goals, two of which came in a span of 46 seconds late in the first half that gave the Jaguars a 4-3 lead going into the break. Jake Rust, Ian Olenik and Nathan Levine also had a goal apiece for Windham.

Patrick Vetter had to goals to lead St. Thomas (7-3, No. 10 in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) while Marcus Broom had a goal and an assist and Matt Barnes had two assists. Cam De Tolla also scored for the Saints and Peter Schultz made 13 saves.

Schultz and the Saints' defense kept them in the game, as St. Thomas finished with just 16 total shots and didn't have possession much in the second half.

"We never got off the bus," St. Thomas coach Sean Houlahan said. "Credit to (Windham), they saw the poor little animal struggling and they just kept playing with us the whole way through. We had no energy (Friday). We didn’t play Saints lacrosse. They played hard and wanted to win, and they deserved to win."

Despite that, St. Thomas was only down 5-3 going into the fourth quarter, and started out the frame getting a big save from Schultz. The Saints got off a couple of shots on the next possession, but eventually turned the ball over, one of seven turnovers in the fourth.

Rust put Windham up 6-3 with 4:52 remaining and Vetter was able to answer 49 seconds later for the Saints' only goal of the second half to get it back to a two-goal game.

But the Jaguars won the ensuing faceoff and ran more time off the clock before Rice scored with 2:19 to play. Windham got the faceoff again and St. Thomas never saw the ball the rest of the way.

"It comes back to a lot of the fundamental stuff," Young said. "We’ve been really harping on this, because passing and catching groundballs, that’s your kryptonite. If you can’t do that well, you’re not going to play lacrosse well. In the second half, we won the groundball battle. There weren’t a lot of forced passes. All of a sudden, you commit on those things and this is what it looks like."