Lacrosse: West Forsyth boys’ historic season ends at Lassiter

Article & photos courtesy of Forsyth County News –> Original Article Here

MARIETTA – After a one-hour, 30-minute lightning delay, Lassiter beat West 16-4 in the quarterfinals of the GHSA state tournament.

Lassiter (17-4, 5-1 in Area 4) got off to a quick start in this game. Justin Edwards got the Trojans on the scoreboard less than a minute and a half into the game. Then just two minutes later, Edwards already had a hat trick as Lassiter took a 3-0 lead with 8:18 remaining in the first quarter.

West (17-4, 6-2 in Area 5) couldn’t find much of an answer for the Trojans’ attack. Lassiter led 5-0 at the end of the first and had 11 shots.

“They came out hot, and we couldn’t catch up,” West’s Devin Jones said. “We started to get a little bit of run towards the end, but we just couldn’t catch up, that’s all I can really say about it.”

Josh Stone finally got the Wolverines on the board with 9:03 remaining in the second quarter, but by that time the score was already 6-1.

The Trojans led 11-1 at half time, and had 24 shot attempts, compared to just 7 for the Wolverines.

“They shot the ball well,” West head coach John Laden said. “We missed a couple second slides. They moved pretty well without the ball, and they shot the ball well early, which got us behind. We didn’t shoot the ball well early, which could’ve kept us a little closer, but there was some opportunities we didn’t take advantage of.”

Devin Jones, J.R. Brockman, and Chad Zapp all scored goals for West in the second half.

Lassiter finished the game with 40 shots, compared to 13 for West. Nine different Trojans scored a goal for Lassiter, and five different players scored multiple goals.

Despite the result, Laden and the players still managed to have a great season by making it all the way to the quarterfinals of the state tournament.

“It’s very exciting for our program,” Laden said. “It’s historic, and we’ll build on it and be back very soon.”

“Honestly I couldn’t be more proud,” Jones said. “We’ve never ever done this before. I started with this program back in 2014 as a freshman. We weren’t the best, but starting from the bottom and being one of the worst teams in the division ever, to come up to this elite eight team, that’s astounding. And I couldn’t be more proud of our team.”