Boys lacrosse: Medina blows lead to Shaker Heights, forced to share final GCC crown

MEDINA — The Medina boys lacrosse team was all set to celebrate its final Greater Cleveland Conference season by winning the outright championship. Shaker Heights crashed the party Tuesday night. The Bees got out to a raucous start in its final GCC game before leaving for the Suburban League next season, but the defending champion Raiders answered with eight straight goals en route to a 9-8 win that forced a tie between the schools. Strongsville could make it a three-way split atop the five-team conference with a win over Brunswick on Thursday. The loss ruined a fantastic start by Medina, which scored five straight goals in the first half to take a 5-1 lead with one minute left. The Raiders (10-4, 3-1) kicked off the game-changing run right after that with a goal by Clay Bouthilet off a pass from Will Huff with 11 seconds remaining. By the time Johnny Nunn scored on a feed from Caleb Miller with 6:50 left in the game, the Bees (8-6, 3-1) trailed 9-6. Medina went a stretch of 18:10 between the second quarter goal by Miller and Nunn's score. "It is definitely really unfortunate (to lose), especially starting the first half with a 5-1 lead," the Bees' Will Ivey said. "We need to stay consistent, because there's been a lot of games this year where we have the lead and end up blowing it in the second half. "I don't know why. Maybe we get in our heads and think we've already won the game. That's a big thing for us. We have to stay consistent." After Peter Linz put Shaker Heights on the board first just over two minutes into the game, Ivey scored back-to-back goals on assists by Lach Talley and Evan Ryba to spark the early run. Chase McCurdy and Talley added their own goals, with Talley's coming off a pass by Tyler Wilson with 11 seconds left in the half. Miller finished with two goals and one assist, while Talley had one goal and two assists as the pair led the Bees with three points. Ivey and McCurdy each added two goals. The Bees struggled to maintain the offensive momentum into the second quarter. "We came out the first quarter on fire," Talley said. "Then in the second quarter we didn't have the ball much. From the second quarter on we just didn't care for the ball much. Lots of forced turnovers. "It's stuff that's easy to fix, but it keeps happening game after game." Adding to the frustrations of the Bees was the play of Raiders goalie Gideon Polster, who made 10 saves to thwart scoring chances time after time. While the Bees offense struggled in the second quarter, the defense was still stout. Coby Miladinovic (4 saves) and the rest of the defenders did a great job of keeping Shaker Heights from clean looks from close range. The Raiders got momentum from Bouthilet's goal with 11 seconds left in the first half and carried it into the second. Shaker Heights did a good job of spacing the Medina defense to find seams to score five unanswered goals in the third quarter and the first two goals of the fourth to take a 9-5 lead. "They took their guy out of the crease, which made it farther slides (for help defense)," Ryba said. "We just weren't sliding to sticks, and they were running through us. We got too spread out and weren't ready for it." Ryba did a great job of marking senior attack Will Huff in the first half, but the Raiders found other options in the second half in the combination of Andrew Mullen and Cole Richard. Mullen scored the first two goals of the third quarter before Richard scored four straight. Mullen then capped the run. The Bees tried to close the gap, starting with Nunn's goal, but ran out of time. McCurdy scored his second goal with 1:51 left and Miller cashed in with 12 seconds remaining. Contact John Urchek at jurchek@medina-gazette.com.