ST. CHARLES – The MICDS lacrosse team did not need a reminder of what happened the previous spring, but just to be sure –
“The first day of practice, we got a picture of De Smet hoisting the championship trophy and put it in our locker room,” junior Henry Oliver said. “We needed to come back to this day.”
It actually took two days for a determined, focused and polished MICDS team to pose for a new photo to put in their locker room.
Oliver led a stifling defensive effort, sophomore Peter O’Leary dominated faceoffs and junior Austin Minges scored five goals as MICDS defeated SLUH 15-6 to win the Class 2 Missouri Scholastic Lacrosse Association state championship at Lindenwood University’s Hunter Stadium.
MICDS (17-5), which also received hat tricks from senior Willy Carpenter and sophomore Ian Spakowski, won its ninth state title in the last 10 years.
“It was really fun chasing this year,” MICDS coach Andy Kay said. “To lose something that our program obviously finds to be very special and have our guys dial in and decide that they were going to outwork everyone, it’s the best.”
When the Class 2 championship game began Friday night under threatening skies, neither team could harness lightning in a bottle.
“We played pretty nervous in the opening three or four minutes,” Kay said. “I felt like our energy and intensity was outstanding, but it wasn’t equating to smart offensive possessions.”
Right before the skies opened up, MICDS unlocked its offense when Minges scored off a feed from sophomore Steele Crissman. O’Leary won the ensuing faceoff and scored eight seconds later to make it 2-0.
“I had my head down, I saw an alley and I just took it,” O’Leary said. “We needed some juice and when we have juice, we’re unbeatable.”
During last year’s title game loss to De Smet, O’Leary dominated the faceoff X before the Spartans began falling on top of him to prevent him from escaping with the ball – a tactic that helped De Smet win the title with a fourth quarter surge.
Against SLUH, O’Leary was 16-for-19 on faceoffs and helped MICDS seize control of the game.
“The loss last year hurt, so I worked two times harder,” O’Leary said. “I knew they were probably going to try to beat me up again like last year, but I was not going to let that happen.”
Three minutes after O’Leary’s goal, the game was stopped and postponed due to a series of thunderstorms that zapped power from both scoreboards at Hunter Stadium.
MICDS quickly checked the functionality of the temporary scoreboard when Spakowski scored 20 seconds after the game resumed on Saturday. Carpenter and Minges found the net soon after that to give MICDS a 5-0 lead after one quarter.
Minges underwent back surgery last spring, recovered over the winter, and when the 2024 lacrosse season arrived, assumed he would slide into a starting role on attack for the Rams.
“Going into the season, I thought I was going to get my spot without competing and that was very arrogant,” Minges said. “The first two months, I didn’t get as many minutes as I wanted. I struggled a lot with not knowing my role and not competing as hard as I should. I was half in and half out.”
Minges played sparingly and scored three goals in his first nine games. He earned a start May 4 against Priory and scored twice. After the state quarterfinal round, Minges had accrued 11 goals in total for the season.
He scored five goals in the semifinal against De Smet and five more in the title game against SLUH.
“The biggest thing was keeping my head up, competing and making my team better. I realized that I needed to compete 100 percent and give it my all no matter when and where it happens,” Minges said. “The crazy thing is that I didn’t know what I was capable of doing.”
Minges earned a hat trick midway through the second quarter to put MICDS ahead 7-0 before SLUH (14-6) made its move. Goals by seniors Vince Chappuis, Sean Boyd and junior Brendan Kelly, combined with four excellent saves by sophomore goalie Sam Dorsey helped SLUH slice the deficit to 7-3 at halftime.
“I felt like there was a stretch when we played some ‘hero ball,’” Kay said. “Guys wanted to get their (goals) and say they scored a goal in a state championship game. It’s a young team, and I understand that, but (halftime) was just a reminder that, ‘We’re really good, and if we can draw one (defender), pass forward and find the back side, we’ll be able to put some points on the board.’”
Those points came in bunches.
Minges, Carpenter and Spakowski each scored twice and junior Henri Sokolich added another as MICDS went on a 7-0 run after halftime.
“The mindset was to shut down their energy as soon as they came out and we did that effectively,” MICDS senior defender Tyler Tschudy said. “Defensively, we needed to communicate, communicate, communicate and if we messed up, we knew we were good enough and fast enough to recover.”
The wing pairing of Oliver and sophomore Graham Faust in the midfield made a huge difference on both faceoffs and at the defensive end, as MICDS yielded eight goals or fewer for the seventh consecutive game.
“All season, we put a hard emphasis on ground balls,” Oliver said. “We took a tough loss against Louisville Trinity when we got beat up in the midfield and our identity had to change.”
And the Rams’ identity changed throughout the season, from O’Leary’s adjustments at the faceoff X, to the mindset of Minges on attack, to an MICDS team that learned valuable lessons after a soul-searching defeat in the title game last year.
“We got pretty separated in the fourth quarter last spring and played ‘me’ ball,” Oliver said. Coming in this year, we knew we weren’t going to make the same mistake twice.”
And the Rams have the championship photo to prove it.
Photos can be found at https://benvessa.smugmug.com/2024-Boys-Lacrosse