The Griffins Lacrosse Club won the Bison Invitational for the third time, over the weekend at Joe Machado Field. It was their fourth appearance in the finals, and they held off a scrappy, tough, and highly skilled program out of San Marcos (San Marcos, CA) in the finals.
The game was hard fought until the final seconds from both teams. San Marcos battled back to bring the score to 7-6 in the final minute of the finals. The Griffins held them off and won 7-6. The Griffins went 5-0 on the weekend playing some great competition throughout the weekend. They had a great showing from their goalies, Ben Sandoval and Charlie Pallone, who backed a hard hitting, physical defense lead by Captain Jaxon Moore along with a shutdown defender Zak Whitman, according to Griffins Head Coach Matt Cunniffe.
The game was controlled by the defensive midfield of Gavin Batistelli, Carter Alexander, Max Denny, Dylan Hale, and Gavin Korzeniowski who made great hard-fought clears and played shutdown defense. The well-rounded offense was led by Tournament MVP and team captain Colin Shriver who literally ran over defenders with his physical play to lead Los Al to the finals. The offense had a well-rounded attack from Cooper Lindholm, Rob Hansen, Tommy Argenzio (team captain), Sebastian Marr, and Jack Kreutzer (team captain).
The games wouldn’t have been won without our faceoff midfielders, Kane Nucum and Logann Ruiz, battling at the faceoff X for every possession, according to Cunniffe. And, Nick Shalbey provided some key goals and hard fought ground balls throughout the tournament, he added.
“It was an amazing weekend of team bonding, creating team culture, and enjoying time away from the field as a program, Cunniffe said. “It was capped off with a three-peat of winning the tournament. Thank you to all the directors (Devin Maxwell and his crew) and the city of Avalon for hosting the tournament.”
