Special to The Leader

The Scarborough Boys lacrosse team finished off its regular season with a 13-3 victory against the Gorham Rams, and now look to the playoffs. 

Gorham has struggled this season and will miss the playoffs, but they came out in the first quarter determined to give Scarborough a game. The Red Storm started all of its seniors which created some confusion, particularly on offense, and that, along with Gorham’s energy kept this game a scoreless tie until 38 seconds in the first quarter, when Danny Clark connected for the first score of the game.

That apparently broke the spell as Scarborough proceeded to score four more times in the next four minutes of play. The Storm pounded the Ram defensive zone mercilessly after that, and built up a 10-0 lead by the fourth quarter, before substituting liberally for the remainder of the game.

Jake Barrett scored three goals, Connor Gullifer and Matt Mayo added two each, and Brendan Ham, Nick Broadhurst, Colin O’Connor, Nick Neugebauer, Peter Moore, and Clark each had a score.

Coach Joe Hezlep is still looking for his offense to hit its stride. 

“The offense is still really slow to get going. We have to take advantage of opportunities that we’re getting early. We figured it out later, but earlier in the game we weren’t putting the ball in the net at all.” 

Looking forward to the playoffs, Hezlep said he is counting on his defense to hold the score while offense gets in gear. 

“The defense has been strong pretty much all the time. There’ve been a few times where we’ve had some communication issues, but once we’ve gotten in a settle defense we’ve done really well. So, we’ve got to work on our transition defense. As long as we get the opportunity to set up we can play defense as well as anyone.”  

Slow starts have hurt the Storm all season, so Hezlep said he will look to get out quickly once the playoffs start and every opponent is a quality one.

The Storm will have to win two games in order to make it to the Western Maine A finals, and it’s likely that they will play opponents they have faced before along the way. While they are focused on the next game, they clearly would like an opportunity to face off against the cross-town rival Portland Bulldogs, who dominated the Storm in their earlier contest.

Scarborough and Portland have met in the Western Maine A finals two of the last three years, with each squad owning a victory. If they have the opportunity to play once more, the winner of the rubber match will not only win the game, but a ticket to play in the state championship game.