Wood, Waubonsie Valley win Lacrosse Cup

There’s a reason Waubonsie Valley’s Zach Wood is going to the University of Virginia on a lacrosse scholarship next year.

He’s good. Very, very good.

That wasn’t news to Grayslake North, which tried to slow Wood during Saturday afternoon’s Class-B Lacrosse Championship at Oak Park-River Forest High School in Oak Park.

Grayslake North (17-5) jumped ahead early, leading 4-1 at one point, but the Warriors battled back to a 6-6 tie at halftime and then got its offense in gear, with Wood leading the Warriors to a 16-9 victory.

“I started this program nine years ago, and this win today is about the program,” Waubonsie Valley coach Mike Julius said. “We won this game four years ago, because of the effort we started then.”

Grayslake North had pulled even at 8-8 on an A.J. Fish goal with 8:09 left in the third quarter, but Waubonsie Valleuy’s Connor Mersch responded with his fourth goal of the game midway into the quarter. T.J. Berk added a score with 4:43 left, followed by two more from Wood, who attends Metea Valley, to extend their lead to 12-8.

The Knights wouldn’t cut their deficit to less than 4 goals the rest of the afternoon as the Warriors outscored the Knights, 10-3, in the second half.

“I told my guys that defense would win the game and offense would finish it,” Julius said. “Conditioning was huge. You have to be in shape, and we did a lot of running earlier this year and it made a difference in the third quarter.”

Wood finished with a game-high 6 goals for the Warriors.

“Zach Wood is a handful, and he took over,” Grayslake North coach Brad Fish said. “There was a reason for the second half, and he’s the real deal and was tough to handle.”

A.J. Fish scored 5 goals for a Knights team that will leap to A-Class next year.

“It was a great season by these guys and this is a group of 11 sophomores, 8 juniors and only 5 juniors,” Brad Fish said. “They worked their tails off beginning with lifting weights on their own in November.”

The teams had met previously this season on April 30. Coincidentally, the score was nearly identical as the Warriors came away with a 15-9 decision.