On an exceptionally cold night at Lake Travis High School, sophomore attackman, Jonah Rogers, led the Lake Travis Cavaliers to a 15-1 victory over the Cedar Park Timberwolves with an impressive 4 goals and 4 assists.
The Division 2 Timberwolves, for their first game of the season, faced the Division 1 Cavs where both squads would look to use this early-season contest as an opportunity to compete and settle into the spring season and to discover areas for improvement moving forward.
Lake Travis is already looking very good on offense as they complete a lot of passes and are extremely patient with the ball, forcing Cedar Park defensively to slide, recover and rotate multiple times in a single possession. Behind Rogers’ 8 point night, the Cavaliers had 8 different scorers including tremendous performances from sophomore Fabio Medina, who added a hat-trick on the night, sophomore Kaden Davis with two goals and an assist, senior Zach Shaffer with a goal and two assists, and senior Will Richardson with his own goal and an assist.
The first quarter started off close, as Cedar Park was able to dominate possession due to excellent ground ball play and Lake Travis’ struggles in the clearing game early. Although receiving many second chance opportunities, the Timberwolves offensively were not able to connect on any of their chances as the Cavalier defense led by senior defenders Quintan Pellegrino, Josh Khoury, and junior goalie Case Mayes is tough group to crack as they look to apply pressure all over the field. When the Cavs did start to get possession, they made them count as LT jumped out to 4-0 lead after the 1st and they appeared to just be getting warmed up. Junior Preston Denney got involved in the scoring adding two goals in the 2nd to help reach a halftime score of 9-0.
The second half was more of the same as the Cavs really began to play disciplined and execute at a high level. Their clearing improved, junior face-off specialist Hunter Kirby locked it down at the X, and the LT defense continued to pressure the Cedar Park midfield causing a hefty amount of turnovers. LT sophomore long stick midfielder, Luke Elder, is relentless and will make their opponent’s top midfielder very uncomfortable throughout the season. The Cedar Park offense would finally get on the board late in the third behind a solid individual effort from senior midfielder Jake Givens leaving us at 13-1 after the 3rd and an eventual 15-1 final.
Even though it is not the outcome they were hoping for, there is plenty to learn from Cedar Park’s season opener. With an all-senior attack unit, led by Patrick Twombly who is very comfortable with the ball in his stick, and a monstrous defense of senior Luke Benavides and sophomore Boston McKeon in front of senior goalie Thomas Rabago locking it down in-between the pipes, the Timberwolves will look to improve and they will be just fine when district play comes around in a month. There is also no doubt a handful of these guys will be seriously considered at the end of the season for the #StickStarReport All-Name team.
Cedar Park (0-1) will have the opportunity to make the proper adjustments and get right back at it as they head home to host non-district opponents, McCallum and Hyde Park, in the next week. Lake Travis (2-0) would had an even quicker turn around as they traveled to Westwood on Saturday and then hosted the North District contender, Coppell Cowboys, on Sunday. By the end of the weekend, Lake Travis found themselves sitting at 4-0 on the season with the two weekend wins.
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