Both the Winters Mill and Parkside boys lacrosse teams entered Tuesday evening?s Class 2A-1A state final at UMBC with perfect records. Something had to give.
In its first trip to the state tournament, Winters Mill came out of the battle of undefeated teams with a 7-6 overtime victory, sending Parkside to a second consecutive state final loss. Sophomore attackman Ben Love scored the winning goal for the Falcons (18-0) 3 minutes, 18 seconds into the first sudden-death overtime.
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Winters Mill?s Jake Stocksdale and Sean Smithson each scored a pair of goals and tallied one assist, while senior attackman Gavin Carey led Parkside with two goals.
It was a game of ties, spurts and runs as the two squads struggled for position the whole way. The Falcons were the first to strike midway through the first quarter. Garrett Hill, Sam Reitenbach and Stocksdale combined for three Winters Mill goals in a two-minute span to go up 3-0. The Falcons? flurry of scoring was short-lived, though, as Parkside (16-1) settled down and kept them scoreless for the remainder of the first half.
Two minutes into the second quarter, the Rams went on a run to even the score. Carey scored the first goal, and Chris Dashiell cut the deficit to one with a little more than eight minutes left in the half. With 43 seconds on the clock, junior midfielder Kyle Gallagher found senior Tim Hurst for the tying goal.
Gallagher picked up the scoring in the second half, scoring on an assist from Dillon Levy five minutes into the third quarter. Just over a minute later, Dashiell found Zach Hill for a fifth Parkside goal to put the Rams up two on the Falcons, whose last goal was with 4:49 remaining in the first quarter.
That scoreless streak ended 25 minutes later when Sean Smithson scored his first goal off a Stocksdale assist late in the third quarter. Smithson came back to even the score at 5-5 for Winters Mill when he scored an unassisted goal three minutes into the final frame.
Kevin Dzimiera scored for Parkside with 3:33 left in the game, but Winters Mill forced the overtime when Stocksdale scored his second goal of the game with 2:01 to play.
