The Crusaders sweep their Metro conference rivals the Seattle Prep Panthers in a 14-8 dramatic semi-final match on Saturday afternoon at Eastside Catholic High School.

If Seattle Prep could re-do the first half of this game they might have had a legitimate chance at getting into the final game. Eastside Catholic put up seven goals in the first quarter while also shutting their opponents out in the second. The Panthers won the second half 6-4 but the deficit was too large to come back from as they painfully watched their season disappear to a 14-8 defeat.

The Crusader’s furious four were at it again in this one with senior attackman Ryan Grazko, junior midfielder Joey Matte, sophomore attackman Eric Prologo and junior midfielder Jack Sercu putting together 11 of their team’s 14 goals. Seattle Prep held them to eight goals in their last meeting with a tough zone defense but these young athletes adjusted in time to send their team to Starfire.

Panther’s junior attackman Brennan Holmes and freshman attackman Lucas Wathen secured three goals a piece in their defeat to the Crusaders. This team will be back with fire as their top five scoring players will return next year and Wathen demonstrated huge promise for a varsity first year as he bagged 46 total goals on the season. With the amount of competition this team brought this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a shift in the number one spot for the Private Metro conference in coming years.

Playing a team multiple times in a season can be advantageous, especially if it’s going to come in handy for a playoff game. With their last match-up coming to a close 8-5 win, it was expected that this team would try to find a way to widen that gap.

“They run a really amazing zone on defense and last time we played them their zone really gave our offense a lot of trouble.” Eastside Catholic head coach Charles Goodman said. “Coming into this game we knew they were going to throw that zone on us and so we’ve been spending a lot of time practicing playing against the zone.”

A well-constructed zone defense can be a nightmare for young athletes as they try to navigate their way towards the crease and get defender movement. It’s common to see man-on-man defenses at this level due to its simple play style. Head coach Rich Stearns has implemented an impressive defensive scheme as it gave a high scoring team like the Crusaders reason to sweat.

Eastside Catholic will gear up for a guaranteed entertaining fight with their long time rivals, the O’Dea Fighting Irish (7-8) at Starfire on Saturday afternoon. The Crusaders won their previous two matches this season with their latest game coming to a tight 11-9 win. Needless to say, this championship match is going to get bloody.

“We’re going to be playing O’Dea for the third time as well and that’s going to be a real good game.” Goodman said. “We know they’re just as hungry for it as we are if not hungrier.”

Goodman isn’t wrong, this game will not come easy for them but he appeared to be as confident in his team as ever.

“We know that they’re gonna come out and bring their A-game and we know they’re really working hard to get ready for us and we’ve got a lot of respect for that team.” Goodman said.

“A lot of it for the next week is going to be sort of sharpening up our tools, taking care of the little things, making sure that we’ve got ourselves settled and just really working on hammering the team message, ‘team first’, playing together and really playing as a unit all over the field.”

Story by Michael Thornbloom