Statesmen Drop Montreat 21-9 to Open North Carolina Trip
Black Mountain, N.C.–The William Penn men’s lacrosse team came up with another dominating performance in a 21-9 victory over Montreat in non-conference play Friday.
WPU (4-2) won in convincing fashion by outshooting the Cavaliers (0-2) 72-23 (45-15 in shots on goal). The visitors also claimed the ground ball battle 58-32.
Breck Putzier (So., Minneapolis, Minn., Kinesiology) opened the scoring for the navy and gold less than two minutes into the contest, while Boston Romero (Jr., Las Vegas, Nev., Business Management) followed him with back-to-back unassisted goals. Moments later, a goal from Brady Treloar (Jr., Portland, Ore., Business Management), assisted by Wyatt Christensen (Fr., Madison, Wis., Biology), helped WPU get out to an 6-1 lead after the first quarter.
After a successful opener period, William Penn did even more damage in the second. Kenny Bohney (Fr., Moorhead, Minn.) got the offense going with his first goal, before Christensen took over in the quarter, scoring four of the 10 Statesmen tallies. Brady Treloar (Jr., Portland, Ore., Business Management) capped off the scoring in the first half with help from Putzier as WPU went into intermission with 16-2 advantage.
William Penn kept the scoring going following the break as Max Taylor (So., Minneapolis, Minn., Business Management) scored two goals in the stanza, one assisted by Jeff Kohl (Fr., Gilbert, Ariz., Business Management) and the other by Collin Baliva (Jr., St. Louis, Mo., Mechanical Engineering). Bohney, Kohl, and Baliva also scored in the quarter.
The Cavaliers tallied three goals in the final stanza of play, but they were much too far behind to make it a contest.
Putzier and Christensen led the navy and gold in goals with four apiece, while Romero finished the contest with three goals and three assists. Multiple other Statesmen also produced multiple-goal performances with two each.
The Statesmen had chance after chance as they dominated the face-off circle, winning 28 of the 34 total faceoffs. Ryan Swarts (Jr., Boise, Idaho, Industrial Technology) paced WPU by going 16-for-18, while Nick Hajnasiewicz (So., Minneapolis, Minn., Kinesiology) was strong in the circle as well, taking 6 of his 8 faceoffs. Josh Bell (Grad., Castle Rock, Colo., Masters of Organizational Leadership) also added to the face-off win total by claiming all five of his tries.
Eric Garigan (Jr., Tucson, Ariz., Political Science) guided the goalkeeping squad with five saves in the win.
In addition to dominating the shots category, William Penn committed 17 turnovers (25 for the Cavaliers). As the navy and gold also went 10-12 on clears as Montreat was held to 9-23.
“Great win today with the offense putting together a great showing.” Head Coach Luke Christiansen said. “it was probably our best first half of the season building a 16-2 lead. Although we need to do a bit of a better job executing in the second half as we rotate players, but a solid win we can use to propel us towards our goals.”
Next Up: William Penn will remain in Black Mountain, N.C. Saturday, taking on Keiser in non-conference at 12 p.m. (CST)
