by Hallie Harvey
The Shoreham-Wading River Wildcats add another win to their undefeated season, and are currently ranked 5th out of theTop 20 Long Island boys lacrosse teams. The Wildcats faced-off against their neighboring rival, Eastport-South Manor on Tuesday afternoon and pulled away with a landslide win and a box score of 22-6.
The Wildcats are now 7-0 while the ESM Sharks fall to a record of 1-5. Over the years, these varsity teams proliferated a lot of animosity, but as Shoreham-Wading River climbs to the top of the ranks for Long Island’s boys high school teams, they continue to make a name for themselves.
ESM showed a promising start when junior attacker and Lehigh commit, Peter Theodoropoulos, opened the game with a fast break— scoring within the first six seconds from the whistle. However, ESM fell behind quickly as the Wildcat’s offense was hard to stop.
Unfortunately, the hosting Eastport-South Manor’s scoreboard lost power within the first three minutes of the game. Yet, Shoreham-Wading River created such a significant difference between points-scored that the box score is still disputed.
A key component of SWR’s offense were the team’s leading scorers, senior attackman and Navy commit, Jeffrey Lachenmeyer, and sophomore Alec Gregorek. Lachenmeyer is ranked in the top 5 male scorers on the Island, with 18 total goals before Tuesday’s game.
“I was fortunate to add another 3 goals to my tally,” Lachenmeyer said after the game. “All assisted though. I couldn’t have reached that number without the strength our offense brings into each game. I believe I only have maybe one or two unassisted goals.”
Lachenmeyer and the rest of SWR’s offense were able to go on scoring run after run, creating a 15 goal deficit at one point. However, ESM has some pretty talented freshmen offensemen in Preston Vinch and Daniel O’Dell, who each had points on the board for the Sharks. Hopefully this young offense will get to shape the program into a top competitor when the Sharks return to play their rival again in the future.
Lachenmeyer discussed how the ESM-SWR rivalry has compared in years past, the last time these two teams met was in 2019. “I would say there is definitely some bad blood between the two teams,” he said. “There were some high penalty games in the past, so we knew we had to play a big game against this team. I’m glad we came out and executed our game plan.”
Shoreham holds onto their undefeated season and hope to keep it uncontested as they finish throughout the rest of their regular season. “We have definitely started to get things rolling our way,” Lachenmeyer said about the pace the Wildcats have going so far. “We have just recently found the groove to start our games off stronger after having a few slow starts. This momentum is crucial in a season like this where games are every other day.”
