By Chris Goldberg
Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 11/11/12
Mesa Fresh 2014 won three games by one goal and capped the day by edging the highly-touted Baltimore Crabs, 5-4, Saturday to win the inaugural Big 4 Champions League at Penn Charter.
The event, which drew over 40 college coaches, saw two teams each from Philly powers Mesa Fresh and Duke’s L.C. battle squads from around the East Coast in a championship-style recruiting tournament. In all, eight games were decided by one goal.
In the finale, Mesa Fresh rallied from a 3-1 deficit as Conor Glancy (Malvern Prep, junior) scored twice and goalie Bryce Womack (Perkiomen Valley, junior) stood out in goal and made a brilliant save to preserve the win with six seconds to play.
Besides toppling the Crabs, Mesa 2014 also defeated two Dukes teams, the Green (2014), 4-3, and the Blue (2015), 5-4.
“We played really well and the defense was outstanding today,” said Womack, who teamed with Bayard Rustin’s Brent Millichap (junior) to provide strong goaltending in al three games. “We knew a lot of the kids on the Dukes teams so we really wanted to beat them.
“We always heard about the Crabs and people are always talking about how good they were so it was good to beat them, too.”
Womack was glad to get extra exposure.
“I’m talking to a couple coaches,” said Womack, who plays in the Pioneer Athletic Conference. “Playing with Mesa and NXT is important. The PAC-10 doesn’t get much recognition even though we do have a lot of good players.”
Glancy had four goals during the day. He drew his team within 3-2 in the title game and then scored the game-winner with 7:45 to play.
“It was very exciting,” said Glancy, who is looking at some Ivy League schools as well as West Point. “We played pretty good team ball – like our coaches say, ‘Mesa ball.’
“I think most of our goals were assisted and we had good ball movement. We had a lot of groundballs. We moved it well and worked well on offense.”
In its first win over Dukes Green, Glancy, Kevin Murphy (Strath Haven), Brendan Bassett (Conestoga) and Tripp Traynor (Malvern Prep) each scored once. Jake Scott (two goals) had the game-winner in the 5-4 triumph over Dukes Blue with a brilliant behind-the-back shot in the final seconds, off a feed from Tucker Carney (Strath Haven). Chris Isenberg, Glancy and Traynor also scored in that game.
The Dukes Blue team toppled SweetLax (New England), 8-7, to claim third place and Dukes Green earned fifth place with a 9-5 conquest of Leading Edge (N.J.). Mesa Fresh 2016 clipped Tri-State, 7-6, on a late goal by Alex Wagner of Bishop Shanahan to take seventh place. Forry Smith of Haverford School had the assist on the winning goal and Alex deMarco (Haverford school) made a key save at the end.
