After an already long day in East Grand Rapids, the JV boys lacrosse team played their second game in the Lax on the Lake Tournament against EGR.

Winning 12-1 against Spring Lake in their first game, the boys had a considerably larger opponent waiting for them, EGR. The final score of the FHC vs. EGR game was 5-5, but due to tournament regulations, they could not go into overtime so, FHC won because they had fewer penalties than EGR did.

Right as the first whistle blew, FHC had already put one in the back of the net. Sophomores Danny Schurman and Evan Metaj scored instantaneously. Without any hesitation, EGR scored. The tone was set for the rest of the game.

Attack man Jace Thornton knew that the game was going to be tight. As Jace and the team thought the final score would be a tie, the unexpected outcome happened. For what was mostly a defensive and offensive game, the five goals scored against FHC didn’t phase the boys.

“Our defense really picked up our slack on offense,” Jace said. “They really locked up their shooters, and Sam Edgar, our goalie, made some key saves at the end. East is always going to be a tight game due to the fact that all teams seem to play their best during a rivalry game.”

The overall play of the game was intense and brutal. Several penalty calls were made on both sides of the field. Since it was a very physical game, the mentality was a big key. Jace said that during a big game against a strong team, you cannot let them get into your head.

Coach Justin Bacon knew that the intense game would call for more than just a few key plays. He thought that FHC’s defense held a good team to only 5 goals in 50 minutes; he was pretty proud of their effort.

A lot goes into beating a good team like East, but the biggest factor was being able to control tempers and playing with class. There’s a lot of games going on that day and so to keep on schedule if the final score is a tie the team with the least amount of penalties wins the game,” Bacon said. “It would’ve been very easy to get caught up in the moment and put emotions before the betterment of the team. Our guys did a good job keeping their emotions under control.”

Junior Will Kuiper was also a key player in this game. As a defenseman, he knew what he had to do to keep them from scoring. Along with the rest of the defense, the struggle was getting it up the field fast enough to where they didn’t have to worry about it coming back across the field. Will also thought that they could have played better, but they kept their head in the game until the end and were able to pull out with the win.

“Our defense really played well yesterday,” he said. “When you hold a team to five goals you always have a chance to win. We also turned them over a lot yesterday and that gave our team easy opportunities to score on the fast break. We want to get out on the fast break and run to score. We weren’t executing on the fast break and that kept EGR in the game. The defense was also a big key, and we played well on defense so that kept us in the game.”

As for the rest of the tournament, later in the day, FHC played Zeeland winning 12-5 which put them on top overall winning the championship. With one game left in their season coach hopes to end it with a bang.

“The goals for the remaining time we have would be to have a hard practice on Monday, and finish the season with a win over Brother Rice,” Bacon said. “We started the season slow with two losses down in Indiana, but since then we’ve been on our A-game and have won every single game all year. We want to leave this season on a high note especially after winning the tournament this past weekend.”