Boys lacrosse: Avon opens tournament with comfortable win

AVON — A lot of close regular-season wins helped Avon earn the No. 9 seed in the Division I, Region 2 tournament. The Eagles decided to make it easy Wednesday, scoring three goals in the first three minutes, two coming from the crosse of junior Will Conley, as they rolled to a 17-3 win over No. 19 Boardman in an opening-round game. Conley scored four of his six goals in the first quarter as Avon improved to 12-3. "Our team knew that in order to get off to a good start in the playoffs we had to come out quick and fast," Conley said. "We wanted to take every opportunity we could to come out and score, so I think being able to really light them up in the first quarter was a real positive for our team." Avon led 8-0 after one quarter and scored the first 10 goals of the game before senior Luke DeJoseph finally found the back of the net for Boardman with 4:37 remaining in the first half. "When we went to Boardman earlier in the year we got off to a really slow start. We eventually got the end result we wanted but we knew we couldn't do that again tonight," Avon coach Rod Wright said. "We wanted to make sure we had a playoff mentality not just for tonight but to carry over into Monday." The Eagles will be back at Westland Heating/Air Conditioning + Plumbing Stadium on Monday to face No. 12 seed Strongsville. The Eagles defeated the Mustangs 11-8 in their first game of the season. "They are a different team and we're a different team right now," Wright said. "We have to come out and play a different game than we did in March. If we play the same game we played early in the season, we'll probably lose. We have to make sure we come out and play like the team we've become over the course of the season." When Conley wasn't scoring, his teammates took over the offense. Junior Evan Juergens scored four goals while Fin Jerdonek, Jude Theibert and Jackson Brokaw had two goals each. Sophomore Reese O'Reilly accounted for the other Avon goal. "It's important to get off to a quick start. Not only do you have the lead but it gets the defense and everyone on the bench fired up," Juergens said. "We tried to keep the ball mainly on the offensive side of the field." Despite the fact that Boardman won the majority of first-half face-offs, Avon did such an outstanding job of forcing turnovers and defending against Spartans clears that the Eagles went into the locker room at halftime with a 20-3 advantage in shots on goal. It was the third time this season that Avon held an opponent to three or fewer goals in a game. Eagles goalkeeper Lucas Deacon limited the Spartans to one goal in the first three quarters before getting the final 15 minutes off. Theibert's goal with 10:02 left in the third quarter gave Avon a 13-1 lead and sent the game into a running clock for the rest of the second half. Contact Todd Shapiro at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.