Hawk Laxmen Follow Up Close Wins With Easy Victory

By Andy Hutchison

Sure, it must feel good to win by a dozen goals, as Newtown High School’s boys’ lacrosse team has done twice already this campaign. But there’s something to be said for pulling out a hard-fought victory — something the Nighthawks did in consecutive matchups with New Fairfield and Weston on April 9 and 12.

The Hawks, after coming back from a late two-goal deficit to knock of New Fairfield 11-10, took a late lead and held off Weston for an 8-7 victory. Then came a 17-5 shellacking of nonconference foe Conard on April 14, the team’s second win by that score thus far (Newtown toppled Norwalk 17-5 on April 7, two days after blanking Bunnell of Stratford 16-0 in the season opener). Each of the last three wins came on the familiar home turf at Blue & Gold Stadium.

The wins all count the same and the defending South-West Conference champion Hawks carried a perfect 5-0 mark into Thursday’s clash with Joel Barlow (after The Bee went to press).

In the win over Weston, Newtown turned a 4-4 tie into a late-third quarter 6-4 advantage behind two Justin Brophy goals, less than a minute apart.

Back-to-back check to the head penalties called against Newtown gave Weston man-advantage opportunities and the visiting Trojans capitalized with a pair of early fourth-quarter tallies to again knot the score. Cory Fisher put Newtown back ahead with an unassisted net-finder with 6:42 to play and, only 1:12 later, Brophy scored his fourth of the game, on a setup by Trey Trudell, his fifth setup of the contest, for an 8-6 lead. The Nighthawks saw Weston get to within a goal, but fended off the Trojans for a hard-earned win. Newtown junior goaltender Evan Isaacs made 13 big saves to help the Hawks to the win.

“We’re going to get everybody’s best shot coming off last year’s championship,” Newtown Coach Glenn Adams said.

Come playoff time, Newtown stands to potentially benefit from proving it can win tightly contested games.

“A lot of those games, at the end of the season, kind of end up being those close, tight games. So, if we’re able to get some experience with that now it might help us later on down the road,” Adams said.

“It shows we have heart and we don’t give up when we’re down on each other,” Brophy said of the team’s resilience in nail-biters. “It feels pretty good, but if we stop getting in the penalty box we can win by a few more,” he added.

Brophy has been set up by Trudell, generally from behind the opposing team’s net, time and time again thus far. Both players are far and away the team leaders in the respective statistic categories — Trudell in assists with 21, and Brophy in goals with 18 (matching his uniform number).

“They know each other, and they play well — and they play off each other well,” Adams said.

In the victory over Conard, Dan Hebert and Brophy both had four goals, Fisher netted three, and Trey Trudell added two goals and two assists. Brophy also had two assists. Isaacs made eight saves and backup keeper Jon Rospenda made three stops.

Brendan McNamara, who shares faceoff duties with Fisher, has 13 goals thus far, and leads the way with 35 ground ball scoops. Fisher is next on the team with 20 ground ball pickups.