Blythewood’s Will James (center) and Ian Gibbs (2) do battle with Spring Valley’s Matt Hogue in last week’s season finale.
The Blythewood Bengals boys’ lacrosse team (6-8, 4-3) wrapped up their season last week with back-to-back losses in region play. The Bengals headed into the week with a chance to make the state playoffs but losses to Ridge View and Spring Valley forced them to wait until next year. On March 27 Blythewood fell at Ridge View 9-7. That loss broke a three-game winning streak for the Bengals. Blythewood trailed 6-3 at the half and despite outscoring the Blazers 3-1 in the final frame, the Bengals just couldn’t pull out the victory. As a team, Blythewood and Ridge View had 29 and 27 shots respectively, but the Blazers had a decided advantage on the ground, winning 73 ground balls to Blythewood’s 56. Ridge View used a balanced attack and spread their nine goals throughout seven different players with senior Dalton Hinton leading the attack by netting three goals on six shots. The Bengals used five different players to score their seven goals. Blythewood junior Michael Carson scored a team high three goals on five shots.
Blythewood’s season came to an end on the very next night when they lost to the Vikings (11-2, 8-0) of Spring Valley 12-9 in a make-up game. With the win the, Vikings became back-to-back champions of Region IV-4A. Spring Valley held a slight lead of 6-5 at halftime and were able to do just enough in the final frame, outscoring Blythewood 4-2 to seal the victory. Blythewood dominated the game statistically by peppering the goal with 36 total shots compared to Spring Valley’s 18 and even won the ground ball battle 57-36. Carson led the Bengals in scoring for the second straight game with four goals on six shots.
The Lady Bengals lacrosse team (11-5, 9-1) closed out their regular season with back-to-back wins at Irmo and then at Ridge View. On March 25, Blythewood blew out Irmo 16-1 after leading 11-0 at halftime. The Lady Bengals outshot Irmo 36-4. Courtney Hance and Hannah Johnson led the offensive attack with six and five goals respectively.
Blythewood finished the regular season on the road on March 27 with a 20-8 win over the Lady Blazers of Ridge View. The Lady Bengals split their 20 goals up evenly with 10 goals in each half. Blythewood assaulted the Ridge View net with 37 shots on goal and Peyton Wiseman scored a game high seven goals on 14 shots.
Blythewood finished the regular season in the top spot of Region IV-4A and earned the number six seed in the lower state bracket of the playoffs. Tuesday night, the Lady Bengals went on the road to face the number three seeded Lady Eagles of Chapin (14-1). Chapin was averaging 16 goals per game and Blythewood averaged 13 scores per game, but defense proved to be the difference. Chapin had allowed just 66 goals this season compared to 139 on the Lady Bengals side and Blythewood’s playoff run was cut short in the first round of the state playoffs with a 13-5 loss.