Heartbreak For Hawks — NHS Laxmen Endure Back-To-Back Tough Losses

By Andy Hutchison

It’s one thing to lose, but to come oh so close only to lose one-goal decisions — in consecutive games no less — made for a flat out heartbreaking two-game stretch for the Newtown High School boys’ lacrosse team.

The Nighthawks overcame two second-half deficits of two goals but could not answer undefeated Weston’s last scoring strike, with two minutes to play, in a 10-9 loss to their South-West Conference rivals at Treadwell Park on Tuesday afternoon.

This most recent setback came after a double-overtime 6-5 defeat to nonconference foe Conard at home on Saturday.

After winning their first three games, the Nighthawks have experience arguably two of the toughest losses a team could have in the regular season.

“I think the toughest part about it is … as a team we didn’t come out and play all four quarters,” said Newtown Coach Glenn Adams, adding that his team was sluggish in the first quarter of the Conard game and in the first half of the Weston tilt.

“If we can string together all four quarters we’ll be a pretty great team out on the field. But we haven’t gotten there yet,” Adams said.

Newtown’s Will Northrop had a great performance against Weston as he scored four goals to help keep the Hawks in the game.

After a wild first quarter in which the visiting Trojans seized a 5-4 lead, Weston had the only tally of the second period to carry a 6-4 advantage into halftime.

The Hawks came up firing on all cylinders to begin the third and grabbed a 7-6 lead behind two goals by Northrop and Tim Dalton’s go-ahead tally when he bounced one past Weston goaltender Alex Peyreigne.

Weston got the next three tallies only to see Newtown come back to tie the score. With just 5:05 to play, Lewis Thompson whipped home a shot while Newtown was a player up and Kyle O’Connor set up Northrop’s game-tying tally less than a minute later. But Weston’s Lyle Mitchell scored the last of his five tallies with two minutes to play to help Weston improve to 5-0.

“Anytime you play a great SWC opponent it’s going to be tight,” Weston Coach John Matthews said. “Newtown always plays tough. They’re scrappy, they’re well-coached, they’re fundamentally sound — and we dug deep today.”

Thompson and Dalton each had two goals and Colby Summerlin scored in the loss to Weston. Dan Sclafini scooped five ground balls and goaltender Brandon Body came up with 22 saves.

In Saturday’s game against Conard, the host Hawks finally fell 1:10 into the second four-minute OT period of another back-and-forth game.

Newtown overcame a 3-1 deficit as Summerlin tied the game with a nifty spin-move goal and Thompson set up Dalton for 4-3 Hawks edge. After Conard came back for a 5-4 lead, Summerlin’s third goal of the day sent the game into overtime. Justin Brophy also scored for Newtown. Sclafani had eight ground balls, O’Connor scooped five ground balls, Connor McNamara had four and Thompson three.

Newtown will try to bounce back from these losses Friday, April 23, at Stratford and the Hawks return to Treadwell to host Masuk of Monroe at 4 pm on April 26.