LAX: Needham, Simion Hat Tricks Not Enough at Skyline

(Submitted by Bill Needham)

The Ann Arbor Skyline Eagles celebrated their senior night by defeating the Saline Hornets 11-6 in boys lacrosse on Friday evening at Skyline High School.  

The now 10-5 Hornets have one regular season game left before the MHSAA playoffs begin.  

The game started off as a defensive battle with neither team able to muster a shot until four minutes of play had been completed. Skyline finally found some rhythm as they broke the ice on a nice feed from Ethan Harding to a leaping Grant Marshall, who scored the first of his three goals from eight yards in front of the crease halfway through the first period. Skyline kept the pressure on and scored three more times to take a 4-0 lead with 1:26 to play in the first. The Hornets hadn’t created much offense until senior Tom Needham took the ball and raced past an Eagle defender and fired one past the keeper with just two seconds left in the first period to get the Hornets on the board.

Skyline scored first in the second quarter before Needham again scored on an unassisted dodge from the right side to make the score 5-2 with 9:11 left in the half.  Skyline responded with two goals of their own a minute apart to extend their lead to 8-2 at the half.

Needham won the opening face-off of the second half and raced past two defenders and beat the Eagle keeper for his third goal of the game to cut the Skyline lead to 8-3. Senior David Simion scored about four minutes later off a nice pass from fellow senior Noah Kreitz to put the Hornets back in the game at 8-4. Unfortunately, the Hornets gave up a goal 34 seconds later, then could not convert a two minute non-releasable Eagle penalty into any goals and ended up by giving up two additional Eagle goals in the period to make the score 11-4 Skyline at the end of three.

The fourth quarter did see Saline trim the lead as Simion recorded his hat trick, scoring two more times off nice passes from Mitch Gasche and Davis Bruneau.

Needham paced the Hornets with six ground balls, while Simion and senior Tommy Lucas scooped up four each. Goalkeepers Shane Winkelseth and Liam Turner each recorded six saves in their respective two quarters in net. Saline will host Pioneer High School on Wednesday evening in their final regular season game of 2016.

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