YORK, PA-The York College men's lacrosse team dropped their third straight as the St. Mary's College Seahawks defeated the Spartans 13-7 in a Capital Athletic Conference contest on Saturday in York. The Seahawks improve to 6-5 overall and 2-2 in the CAC while the Spartans fall to 2-6 and 0-5 in the conference.
The Seahawks tallied the first three goals of the game as they led 3-0 after one quarter of play. The Spartans received an Andrew Collins (Olney, PA/Magruder) goal to open the second quarter scoring. St. Mary's scored the next two goals for the 5-1 lead. YCP received a Ben Libertini (Catonsville, MD/Catonsville) goal with 5:55 remaining before the half but the green and white surrendered a goal with just 20 seconds remaining in the half as York trailed 6-2 at the break.
The Spartans opened the second half with a Keegan Mathe (Arlington Heights, IL/Mt. Hebron) man-advantage goal but the Seahawks scored the next four goals to seize total control of the game. Those four goals came 2:10 apart as the Spartans had no answer for the Seahawk run. Each team tallied goals to end the third as SMC led 11-4 after three quarters of play.
York scored the first two goals of the fourth period only to have St. Mary's pick up a pair of goals less than a minute apart late in the game. York got a final goal with 2:19 left to close out the game's scoring.
The Spartan offense was led by Collins as the freshman had three goals and three assists. Adam Cross (Westminster, MD/Westminster), another Spartan freshman, added a goal and two assists while Mathe, Libertini and Josh Papsan (Baltimore, MD/North County) each added one tally. Papsan played his usually outstanding game from the field as he collected a game-high 15 ground balls in addition to winning 12-of-21 face offs for the game.
St. Mary's was led by Shane Baxter as he notched four goals. Doug Mayer added three goals while Pat Donovan contributed two goals an a game-high four assists. Pat Schmidt was the fourth Seahawk with multiple goals as he registered two tallies.
The Seahawks held the edge in almost every statistical categories. SMC outshot YCP 60-26 as they also held a 67-61 advantage in ground balls. York did win 12 o the 23 face offs and both teams notched a man-advantage goal in the game.
Rich Barr played the first 45 minutes of the game to earn the win in goal for the Seahawks. Barr made five saves on 19 Spartan shots. Miguel Snyder made three saves in the final 15 minutes of the game for SMC. Dave Welti (Stroudsburg, PA/Hicksville) finished the game with 15 saves on the 60 St. Mary's shots. Welti went the distance as he allowed 13 goals in the game.
The Spartans return to action on Wednesday when they travel to Villa Julie College for a non-conference contest. Game time in Stevenson, MD is set for 3:30 pm.