Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 4/28/19
From Press Release
When you break records held by Michael Sowers (Upper Dublin) and Kevin Lowe, you’ve accomplished something extraordinary.
Michael Sowers did both yesterday, in what unfortunately ended up being the final game of his junior season.
In the end, there would be no throwing the ball in anyone’s own goal or any of the other craziness related to tiebreakers. There’d just be a thrilling 14-13 Cornell win over Princeton on a goal with four seconds to go, as Sowers continued to rewrite the Princeton record book.
On a late April day that began with snow showers in Ithaca, Sowers scored seven goals and added an assist, breaking the tie he’d spent seven days in with Lowe for the Princeton career record for points. Sowers also broke his own school record for points in a season and, with his second goal, became the first Princeton player and sixth Ivy League player to have at least 100 career goals and 100 career assists.
Princeton came into the game needing to win by at least three to clinch a spot the Ivy League tournament, and the Tigers led 12-10 with less than seven minutes to go. It put a very weird feel over Schoellkopf Field, where Princeton was up two but really down one in a practical sense.
The Tigers wouldn’t be able to stretch it to that three-goal lead, though, as Cornell came back to go up 13-12. Princeton tied it at 13-13 on Sowers’ final goal of the day with 1:26 left, but by then it was clear that Princeton would fall short of the three-goal margin it would need. Cornell’s Clarke Pettersen scored the winner with four seconds left off a great pass from Jeff Teat, and Princeton’s last chance ended with a save by Chayse Ierlan off Charlie Durbin’s shot after a face-off violation as time expired.
The loss did nothing to take away from the extraordinary game, season and career numbers that Sowers has put together.
His seven goals were a career high. His eight points gave him 90 for the year, best ever at Princeton, breaking the record of 83 he set a year ago, when he broke the record of 82 he set the year before that.
And his first goal gave him 248 career points, one better than the 247 Lowe scored before graduating in 1994. Sowers now has 255 career points, with 105 goals and 150 career assists.
Princeton rallied from down 6-3 to tie at 6-6 at the half, and the Tigers would have a pair of two-goal leads, the first of which was at 11-9 on a beautiful wraparound goal by Jake Stevens, assisted by Sowers.
In addition to Stevens, Princeton got one goal each from Durbin, Emmet Cordrey, Phillip Robertson (Duke’s LC) , Chris Brown and Luke Crimmins. Brown finishes his sophomore year with at least one goal in all 27 games of his career.
Cordrey’s goal was his 30th of the year, tripling his previous career total and giving Princeton three 30-goal scorers (Sowers with 37, Brown with 34 and Cordrey with 30) for the first time since Jesse Hubbard, Chris Massey and Josh Sims did it in 1998. Cordrey finished the year with 30 goals and 19 assists for 49 points after having 10 goals, three assists and 13 points his first three years combined.
