Wednesday, April 4, 2012

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Ben Sagerman stopped 15 shots for River Dell, which improved to 2-0 on the season with a 12-5 win at Old Tappan on Tuesday afternoon.

OLD TAPPAN --  For the first time in its four-year history the River Dell boys lacrosse program has a senior class with experience. The Class of 2012 has had an inside view of the growing pains that come with the growth from start-up to full-fledged varsity side and this year River Dell hopes that it is done learning the ropes. An Opening Day win was a step in the right direction and on Tuesday, finding a way to win what was a tie game at halftime would have been a nice encore.

River Dell showed that it has learned a thing or two since its inception including how to close out a game when the opportunity for a win presents itself. Using a stingy defense, an advantage in scooping up ground balls and some timely goal-scoring, River Dell allowed just one second half goal and scored the final seven of the game to turn what was a back-and-forth contest into a 12-5 road win over Northern Valley/Old Tappan to improve to 2-0 on the season.

“We are starting to click. The first couple of years was about laying the groundwork of what our philosophy is as coaches, how the players fit into that philosophy and how we can make it all work together,” said Brian Rendine, who has been the River Dell head coach since the program’s inception. “Now that we have the fundamentals down, I think we are ready to take the next step and put it all together out on the field against good competition.”

Conor Drisccll led Old Tappan with three goals.

The ‘good competition’ part of the game lasted for the better part of the first 30 minutes. After a 4-4 draw through the first half in which neither team scored more than two consecutive goals and after the teams traded goals to start the second half to forge the final tie at 5-5 with 8:54 left in the third quarter, River Dell simply took over.

Jason Fleckenstein ripped a shot from 15 yards out to give River Dell the lead for good and its prettiest goal made it 7-5. A long clearance by goalkeeper Ben Sagerman found Steven Luca tip-toeing the midfield stripe. Luca held a defender on his back as he took possession and then turned up field in an impromptu fast break. Luca then found Evan Rowley cutting down the middle of the field and he made a charge on goal, drawing the defense in the process. With traffic building, Rowley flipped to Christopher Yeung at the right post and he finished smartly into the lower right hand corner of the net to give River Dell the two-goal advantage with 6:48 left in the third.

Luca then tallied the final goal of the third quarter when he converted a Yeung pass from the doorstep as River Dell stretched its lead to 8-5 heading into the final 12 minutes.

“Two of my three goals came off of fastbreaks and you can’t ask for anything more than that as an attackman. You want the ball one-on-one with the goalie and my teammates did a great job of setting me up,” said Rowley, a senior who led River Dell in both goals and assists with three of each. “We have taken our licks in our first few years as a varsity program, the first year we were 3-14. We want to win a [state] playoff game, we want to win a [Bergen] County Tournament game or even make a little county tournament run and definitely finish above .500 for the first time. We are off to a good start.”

Jason Fleckenstein added two goals for River Dell, which scored the final seven goals of the game.

River Dell got fourth quarter goals from Martin Moon, Luca, Gregory Stengel and Yeung to close out the 7-0 goal-scoring streak with which it closed the game and the defense held Old Tappan scoreless for the final 20:54.

“We switched from a man-to-man [defense], which really wasn’t working, and we moved into a zone. We would rather give up outside shots and with the zone that was what we were able to force them to do, shoot from the outside,” said Sagerman, who finished with 15 saves. “Our defense has really been working hard in the offseason and through the preseason and then in these first two games. They have been playing great in front of me and I am just the last line of defense. They made my job easy today.”

Connor Driscoll led Old Tappan (0-1) with three goals and an assist, Anthony Magarazi and Dylan Kaiser had the other two goals and goalkeeper Andrew Carpanini finished with nine saves for the Golden Knights, who are another team trying to work their way up the Bergen County boys lacrosse pecking order.

At 5-5 early in the third period the Golden Knights did some solid work, but will try to put a full 48 minutes together when its hosts Pascack Hills on Wednesday.

“We had a good first half and I thought we were going to be able to build off of that, but it just didn’t work out that way for us today,” said Old Tappan head coach Tom Lebovic. “River Dell really did a good job on faceoffs and that hurt us. To score goals you have to have the ball. But this was our first time out, we have Pascack Hills tomorrow and we’ll try to change a few things up and work for a better result.”

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