No. 3 Moorestown beats Ocean City 5-4 in double overtime game
OCEAN CITY — Ocean City and Moorestown entered the South Jersey Group III lacrosse semifinal Saturday afternoon evenly matched.
The Red Raiders at 13-6 and the Quakers at 13-7 sported tough goalies and stout defenses that kept each other’s powerful offenses from running up the score.
“We knew it was a tough one going in,” Moorestown head coach Brian Cary said. “We had a lot of comparable wins and losses on the year. They have a bunch of really good players, a bunch of good scorers, a senior in goal. We knew it was going to be a battle.”
Neither team could get more than a goal ahead at any point and at the end of regulation it was only 4-4, a score that held through the first four-minute overtime period.
A changeup gave the Quakers the win and ended Ocean City’s season.
Throughout the first 48 minutes of regulation and four minutes of overtime, the Quakers were slow and deliberate on offense, setting up attacks at a leisurely pace, passing back and forth to look for the opening the Red Raiders didn’t want to yield.
By the start of the second overtime, Quaker Ryan O’Connor was tired of waiting.
After winning the face-off at midfield, he sprinted toward the Ocean City goal and rather than pass or wait for the defense to fully set up, he fired away from about 15 yards out and put the ball past Red Raider goalie Winfield Dunn, who had made 12 saves earlier in the game.
“It was a great face-off win. I just went down and kind of just said, ‘Let’s shoot it and see what happens,” O’Connor said after the game after getting mobbed by his ebullient teammates. “It was a great possession shot, I think. I said to myself on the face-off, ‘We’ve made it to the second overtime, why not finish it?’”
O’Connor said it was “awesome” playing the Red Raiders, including season-leading scorer Pat Grimley.
“It was really fun. The face-off guy (Dylan Dwyer) was fantastic. It was a great battle. I really enjoyed it,” O’Connor said.
The Quaker coach said O’Connor’s play was planned.
“It is one of those things we talked about at the last intermission,” Cary said. “We said we’re going to put shots on cage. Either it hits the corner and goes in or it’s going to go wide and it’s a possession shot.
“Our face-off guy, Ryan O’Connor, did a helluva job today. As a sophomore he really showed out against a senior committed to Wagner College,” Cary said. “He really stepped up his game. We said, ‘Listen man, you win a face-off and you’ve got a good look at the cage, hit it or it’s got to go wide. He hit it. It was awesome.”
Ocean City coach Joe LaTorre declined to be interviewed about his loss.
Moorestown, the No. 3 seed in the tournament, was facing familiar foe Shawnee, the No. 1 seed, in the final Tuesday afternoon. Ocean City was the No. 2 seed in the tournament.
“They’re pretty much the only team that really beat us up this year,” Cary said of Shawnee. “They beat us 11-3 … but this is a resilient group. We lost to them last year in the semifinals … and that sting is still a little bit in their system so we’re going to put our best game out there.”
Red Raider Jack Davis was the first player to score early in the first quarter, but O’Connor tied it and then Cole Pitcher gave Moorestown its first lead.
Grimley tied it at 2-2 and John Moyer made it 3-2 before Pitcher got his second goal of the game for a 3-3 tie. Quaker Jay Maroney put his team up 4-3 before the end of the third quarter and Red Raider Kai Lindsay tied the game at 4-4 early in the fourth.
Despite trading possessions and changes through the rest of the quarter and first overtime, neither team found the cage again until O’Connor won it.
“Moorestown brought it from the beginning,” Dunn said. “They have some good players, like Cole Pitcher. He is one of the best players in the state, easily. They just brought it to us from the beginning. They hit us hard, and we just did not know how to respond, but overall we played a tough game.”
Dunn credited his Red Raider defenders for helping keep the ball out of the cage.
“The defense let me see the ball well and they played a really strong game plan. Defensively, they slid well, they played their man well, they were communicative, we cleared the ball. They gave me every look they could,” he said. “In the end, we just couldn’t get it done. But props to the defense, and I love the looks they gave me. That was one of the best games we played all year defensively.”
Dunn also singled out his teammate, Dwyer, for his face-offs, while also giving props to all facets of the Moorestown team from offense down to the Quaker goalie.
The senior noted his team, which repeated as Cape-Atlantic League tournament champion, got a lot of good wins over the past year, including over Ridge and Lenape.
“We had a great season,” Dunn said. “It didn’t end the way we wanted, obviously, but we have a young team. Those kids will be back next year and they’ll be ready to fire.”
Dwyer, like many of his fellow seniors who played their last game as Red Raiders, was emotional after the game. The rest of the players and coaches all lined up to hug their departing teammates.
“He is a great face-off kid,” Dwyer said of O’Connor, then he turned his attention to his teammates.
“We played hard, we played fast. I love these guys. I love this team,” he said. “The time I spent with these kids. You grow up living in Ocean City, a small town, and you dream of these big stages … it’s fun just to be a part of that.”
Dwyer, who won nearly 65 percent of face-offs over the season, was injured during the CAL title game but said he wouldn’t have missed Saturday’s game “for the world.”
Photos and story by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
