On Thursday night the Green Level Gators Men’s Lacrosse team started out their season with a statement, challenging a team ranked higher than them and emerging victorious. 

For their opening game, The Gators played The Pinecrest Patriots. Going into the season, The Patriots were ranked sixth in their conference while the Gators were ranked thirteenth. The first quarter didn’t go in the Gator’s favor with the Patriots leading 4-3 by the end of the quarter. The second quarter was more of the same, being hard-fought from both sides but The Patriots still came out on top making the score going into the second half 5-6, Gators trailing by 1. At halftime, the Gators shook off their nerves and came back into the game wanting revenge. At last, they managed to take the lead, dismantling the Patriots in the third quarter with the score going into the 4th quarter being 8-7. At this point, The Gators were on a roll and there was no stopping them. They continued to dominate in the 4th quarter, resulting in the final score of the game being 12-7 a Gator victory!

Although the game was a team effort, there were a few names that dominated the stat sheet. Two of these names are Jackson Spells and Austin Hryn. Both being sophomores, they led the team in goals and assists. Jackson put up 4 goals and 4 assists while Austin put up a hat trick, scoring 3 goals and 1 assist. When asked about how they felt the game went, both Austin and Jackson said, “We started off slow but towards the second half we started to capitalize on Pinecrest mistakes and turned the game in our favor.“

Congrats on the win Gators and good luck on Thursday against Millbrook!