By Michael Wojtychiw
The Lane boys lacrosse team is building quite the dynasty.
A year after defeating Young for the second consecutive season in the city title game, the defending champions were looking for a three-peat against Lincoln Park, which had taken down the Dolphins in the semifinals, becoming the first school other than Lane or Young to make it to the city title game in at least three years.
However, as they had in the past, the Champions came out on top, this time defeating the Lions 12-1 to win their fifth overall city championship.
“It’s fantastic to do it again,” Lane’s Ian Donohoe said. “We lost my freshman year and that one stung. That one stung.
“We worked all year for this game and just showing how we were able to dominate this game, it shows how far we’ve come this season.”
“We’ve got 17 seniors, 10 of whom have played all three years in this game and they’ve all learned how to play lacrosse or started playing with us in the past three years, so it’s fun to watch them develop,” Lane coach Quinn Cashion said.
The Lions got on the board first, scoring on their first possession when Cian Brophy put in a shot to give his squad the quick lead.
It was all Lane after that, though.
Mateus Girolamo scored two goals and Donohoe one on the next three possessions and midway through the first quarter, the Champions were up 3-1 and never looked back.
“I’m just trying to get the ball in my teammates’ stick,” Donohoe said. “If thatmeans I’m going to draw and extra guy and sauce it off, then I’ll do that. If I’m going to take the ball and score, I’ll do that.”
It didn’t matter what Lincoln Park tried to do, the Lane defense was ready for the task.
The Champions’ defense forced 10 turnovers and didn’t allow the Lions to get a shot after that first goal until there were about three minutes remaining in the first half.
A 5-1 halftime lead became 9-1 after three quarters and a running clock was activated when Girolamo scored his fourth goal of the day with just under five-and-a-half minutes remaining.
The three-peat is nice for the Champions, but what everyone with the program us happiest about is how they’ve seen the program grow.
When Cashion took over three years ago, the Lane program wasn’t huge in numbers.
That’s changed a lot in his time with the school.
“”This senior class has really changed what it means to play lacrosse in the city,” Cashion said. “Games like this put us in our own league, public-school wise, so now it’s about looking to take down the private schools, looking to get the interest of where they don’t have to go to the private schools to play good lacrosse; it’s an option here to do that as well.
“We were very top heavy when I got here. Last year we struggled for depth a bit. This year, our 1-9 on offense and defense, they’re all just as talented and can get us goals when need be. So it’s really fun to have the faith in playing everybody this year.
“We found that any player can go off. If one guy gets a goal, another one gets one, we get seven, eight nine guys get one, that’s nine goals. That’s a lot of goals. We’ve had the faith where it’s not on one guy to make it happen.”
And it isn’t just about strength in numbers. The players are coming into Lane with the knowledge of the game and competing with some of the state’s best lacrosse programs, even beating some of them in their first years.
“We want to assert ourselves around the state, show that we can play with all the top teams,” Donohoe said. “We’ve shown that we can play with those teams.”
“For us, this year we had seven losses in the regular season, five of them have come against top 15 teams in the state,” Cashion said. “The level of competition we play is much higher than most in our ecosystem. We’ve been pushing that standard.
“When I started here, we had 55 kids in the program. Now we have 115 total. We have 39 freshmen and are the only CPS team with a freshman team, something we’re really proud of. Having those three levels has given our program a lot of growth. Our freshman team beat Loyola this year, our JV beat St. Viator. Those are top three teams in the state that our lower levels are really starting to compete with and that’s really fun to see.”
Photos by Joey Gelman/OSA
Photos by Alex Beryozkin, Northside student
