GREENWICH — The Newtown High School boys’ lacrosse team’s season came to an end in an 11-5 road loss to the Greenwich Cardinals in the Class L state tournament’s first round on May 29. The No. 11 Nighthawks (10-6 in the regular season) hung in there throughout the first half before the No. 6 Cardinals (12-4) seized control to advance on a hot, muggy late afternoon.

Newtown trailed just 4-1 at halftime, although the game could have been much closer if for some better execution, Newtown Coach Glenn Adams noted.

“We were getting some looks on offense — we just didn’t cash in on them. We had the shots; if we put a couple of them in, the game’s 4-3, 4-4 even, and we’re in the ballgame.”

The Nighthawks saw the Cards build a 7-1 third-quarter lead and, after Alec Beauchemin scored with just 15 seconds left in the third to give the visitors a little bit of hope, Greenwich reeled off four straight fourth-quarter tallies for an 11-2 lead.

“We played really hard pretty much the whole game. It kind of got away from us there toward the end,” Adams said. “The heat got to us. We don’t have a lot of numbers, so once you start getting into the third, fourth quarter, it’s kind of tough to keep running up and down. So we tried to slow it down a bit. We had some unforced turnovers — that didn’t help us.”

Greenwich finished with a 43-13 advantage in ground ball pickups and peppered Newtown goaltender Evan Isaacs, who compiled 16 saves.

Newtown got a pair of goals from Jake Ball, a goal and a pair of assists off the stick of Dan Hebert, and a goal from Graham Derrickson. Alec Beauchemin and Deegan Beauchemin added assists.

Despite the outcome, Adams thought this performance served as a bit of a step forward for his team.

“There was a time when if Newtown came down and played Greenwich there wasn’t a game — it wasn’t even a contest,” said Adams, adding that his Hawks proved in this battle that they can play with any team in the state.

This was a bit of a rebuilding year of sorts for the Nighthawks after graduation claimed several key members of last year’s squad. Adams said he was pleased with how the younger players stepped up into more prominent roles this spring. He has high hopes for the future.

“We’ve had a lot of success in the past and we’re going to have some success in the future. This was a solid year,” the coach said.