Loaded Latin trumps St. Anne’s

St. Anne’s-Belfield scheduled the Boys’ Latin School of Maryland for a variety of reasons, but mostly to see some of the top talent in the nation.
“Our top players want to play against some of the top players in the country,” said Saints coach Doug Tarring. “These are going to be their teammates and opponents when they get to the college level.”
The Lakers’ talent proved their worth on a cold and rainy Saturday as they put on a passing clinic to beat STAB, 17-5.
Wells Stanwick, younger brother of UVa attackman Steele Stanwick, was one of three Boys’ Latin players to pick up a hat trick.
“We kind of ran a little bit of everything,” Stanwick said. “Sometimes we had four and five attackmen in at one time, just trying to run people at midfield that are attackers to get everybody in and try and score.”
Stanwick had a pair of assists to go with his three goals. Marcellus Preston and Jack Rice were the other 3-goal scorers for Latin.
“We got a lot of draws,” said Boys’ Latin coach Bob Shriver. “Our best players are the guys right around the goal. Four of our five leading scorers from last year returned and we tried to keep them on the field as much as we could.”
Boys’ Latin (1-0) jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first quarter behind some tic-tac-toe passing that left St. Anne’s goalie Austin Geisler defenseless.
“We only took a couple of what I would call selfish plays, which was good,” Shriver said. “I think a lot of goals were assisted, just tremendous.”
Of the 17 goals the Lakers scored, 11 were off an assist.
“We knew if they won the faceoffs they could get in transition,” Tarring said. “We talked about not giving up the middle of the field, and to their credit, they pushed it.”
The Saints’ (0-1) offense got off their share of shots in first half, but couldn’t put anything past Patrick Jennings until late in the second half when Andrew Crocket found the back of the net.
“It was a good learning experience,” Tarring said. “Obviously I would have liked it to have been more competitive, but I was real pleased that our kids kept playing hard.”
Crocket scored three of the five STAB goals, with Connor McCullough and Tim Werner picking up the other two.
Tarring is hoping that McCullough and Crocket can step in and be productive on attack.
“We’ve got a lot of very good players, a number of whom are new to the programs this year,” Tarring said. “So we have to work them into the programs, and today was a good education for them.”
The Saints lost two starting attackers in Jack Thomasson and Harry Snyder to graduation. Owen Van Arsdale returns as a junior.
STAB has an exhibition game this week against Delbarton on Wednesday before it opens regular season play on the road against
St. Stephens and St. Agnes on Friday.