The Chaminade and St. Anthony's boys lacrosse teams both have formidable attack lines. Top-seeded Chaminade's, though, is deeper.

Six Chaminade players scored two goals apiece as the defending champion Flyers held off No. 2 St. Anthony's, 13-11, in the Nassau-Suffolk CHSAA Class AA final last night at Hofstra.
  "We know that whoever has the ball, they can go in and take it," said junior attack Ryan Young, who had two goals and two assists, including a goal and assist in succession that gave Chaminade (15-2) a 10-3 lead with 6:34 left in the third quarter.

"Last year, we were basically centered around our defense, and this year, we had our whole attack returning," said Flyers senior midfielder Brendan Gibson, who had two goals and two assists. "All the time in the big games, Ryan Young steps up, Colin Tigh always scores. Everyone on this team is an offensive threat."

That was evident during the first quarter, when the Flyers won four straight faceoffs during a 5-0 run in which four players scored. Max Trunz scored both of his goals during the surge, sparking it with some savvy stickwork on an individual run at the cage that made it 2-2 with 7:46 left, then converting Michael Brennan's feed to make it 4-2 with 5:32 left. Gibson and Young added goals that made it 6-2 entering the second period.

"Their offense is nice, and they run it mostly through their attackmen," said St. Anthony's senior midfielder Sean Burke, whose fourth-quarter faceoff prowess helped the Friars (10-6) get back in it. "If we shut them down earlier, maybe we could have won, but they worked harder than us in the first half, and that's why they came out on top."

It wasn't easy for Chaminade to gain its sixth straight win over St. Anthony's. The Friars scored three times in an 84-second span to pull within 13-11, capped by James Carroll's unassisted goal with 56 seconds left. Burke (three goals) won the ensuing faceoff, but his rocket shot hit the crossbar with 33 seconds left.

Then Chaminade goalie Vincent DePasquale, who had 11 save, came up big, making two stops in a five-second span of the final half-minute. He cleanly scooped Taylor Castagna's low bouncer, and headed away a point-blank shot by Tommy Perini (three goals) with 12 seconds left.

"I shanked the pass, so that's on me," DePasquale said of the initial stop. "One more save, that's all we needed. It was a reaction save."

And a much-needed one considering Burke's dominance at the faceoff X down the stretch.

"It came down to that at the end, and we got them," Burke said. "We just couldn't stick the shots."