The Mohawk Valley Men's Lacrosse team lost their season opener Tuesday evening at Hudson Valley by a score of 17-6. The Hawks played well in were in control of the game for most of the first quarter, but a few breakdowns defensively in the second quarter led to a big seven goal quarter from the Vikings and the Hawks couldn't fully recover. Dominick Gratch opened up the scoring less that two minutes into the game as he dodged from up top right by the Hudson Valley defender and put the Hawks up 1-0 early. Sophomore Max Hunt would stick a shot past Hudson Valley goalie Cole Bourgeois early in the second quarter to make the score 3-2 in favor of Hudson Valley, but then the Vikings would score the next five goals until freshman Derek Ferrone put one in off a loose ball to make the score 8-3 and the Hawks would trail 10-3 at half. Ferrone wasted no time scoring his second goal of the game early in the third quarter, and then Hunt would score two more times to complete the hat trick for the evening, but the Hawks struggled to stop the Vikings attack. Sophomore Ryan Quinn stopped 19 shots on the game in his return to the team after a season-ending injury two years ago. Sophomore Austin Millington led the team in groundballs with six as he has emerged as the Hawks primary face-off man for the year. The Hawks defense worked well together to protect Quinn in net and caused 10 turnovers for Hudson Valley.
"I saw a lot of good things tonight," said 6th year coach Nick Evanoff. "Our achilles heel for the last couple years has been scoring, but we have a lot of talent on this team and guys that can put the ball in the net. It was our first game and we made a lot of mistakes, but we also did some very good things as well. We have some time to clean it up and fix some things before our next game. I am very excited for this team and the rest of this season because this is one of the most talented groups we have had in my time here, and they are getting better at finding each other's strengths every day."
Mohawk Valley returns to action as they will host the Herkimer Generals at D'Alessandro Stadium on Tuesday, March 19th at 6:00pm.