Boys lacrosse: Hinsdale Central defeats Wheaton North
How high is up for the Hinsdale Central boys lacrosse team? It's pretty clear to senior attackman Peter Madden.
The Red Devils may look good, but there is still a ways to go.
"We know what our best lacrosse looks like," said Madden, a co-captain who scored four times Tuesday in a 15-6 defeat of Wheaton North. "The only thing we have to work on is doing that all four quarters."
Hinsdale Central came out blazing, scoring 6 goals in the first quarter off the sticks of five players to take what looked like it just might be an insurmountable 6-0 lead.
But the feisty Falcons climbed back into the contest with a trifecta of goals in the second quarter to pull to within 8-3 at its conclusion. The Red Devils then put the game away with 4 unanswered goals to start the third.
It was more than enough to win and improve to 6-0 this season, but big West Suburban Silver games against Lyons Twp. (Thursday), Oak Park-River Forest (Saturday) and Glenbard West (Tuesday) loom large.
"We have to clean up the little things," said senior attackman Jack Crews, who tallied three times Tuesday. "We started to get sloppy there at the end, we were dropping passes and messing up clears. (A big lead) doesn't excuse us for getting sloppy. We have to get playing our game all four quarters."
Crews scored twice in the first quarter, with his second a shot that just barely broke the plane at 2:01, sliding under the outstretched leg of Wheaton North goalie Nicholas Pellegrino. His third, a blast from the left side at 9:02 of the fourth quarter, gave the Red Devils a 13-5 lead. Madden would follow that up not quite two minutes later with his fourth, another shot from the same spot.
In all the Red Devils had four multi-goal scorers: Madden, Crews, and seniors Danny Karbowski (3) and Jack Nastas (2).
"It's easy to scout a team when your top two midfielders have 40 or 50 goals between the two of them," Hinsdale Central coach Rich Mares said. "The thing I love about our guys is we spread it around."
On the surface it might have looked like a long night for Wheaton North, but in actuality, the Falcons got a lot of production from senior attack Drew Stoneburner, the team's leading scorer, who tallied four times Tuesday. The prettiest was a trailing shot down the right side with 1:43 left in the second quarter after taking a pass from junior teammate Tate Moorehouse inside.
He also scored on his team's first shot of the third quarter - but that came with five minutes left and that only pulled the Falcons to within 12-4.
"We're coming off four straight days of not practicing, so we were all flat," Stoneburner said. "All in all, this is a really good team we played tonight, and I thought we played with them pretty well."
Added his coach, Chris Weed, "Drew's been playing on varsity for us for our years, he knows the lay of the land, as soon as he gets his hands free, he can find the net."
Hinsdale Central outshot the Falcons 45-13 and won 69 percent of faceoffs.