High school boys lacrosse: Brighton pulls away from rival Alta with emphatic 7-goal outburst

Despite his team never leading in the first three quarters on Wednesday, and trailing by four goals on multiple occasions, Brighton coach Chris O’Donnell never doubted his team would rally for the win over rival Alta. It’s what his players are conditioned for.

“We talk about running teams into the ground, and how do you do that is by running nonstop,” said O’Donnell.

Brighton closed the game on a 12-3 run, including seven unanswered over the final 10 minutes to pull away for the emphatic 19-14 road victory.

“That’s the style we want to play, we want to get up and down the field, make it entertaining, and let our guys and our depth go to work. And I think, even with them having that lead, it was how long could they match our intensity, match our up-and-down pace we want to play with,” said O’Donnell. “Late third or fourth, there, they all started to drop.”

Alta’s JJ Massi score his team’s final goal 15 seconds into the fourth quarter to push the Hawks’ lead to 14-12. From there it was all Brighton.

The Bengals scored seven straight goals in a span of 3:47, with Austin Taylor accounting for three of those goals and Gabriel Carrera two more. They each finished with six goals.

Jaxon Webster’s fourth-quarter dominance on the faceoff was the catalyst to the goal explosion.

“He allows us to run. If you play make it, take I like we did kind of late in that game, it gets you the ability to run and taking teams down with you,” said O’Donnell.

An Alta team that was red hot offensively in the first half and no answer in slowly down the defending 5A champion Bengals down the stretch.

It’s how O’Donnell has groomed this year’s team to play, downhill the entire game.

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“We went from a let’s win games 10 -6 last year to let’s win games 19-14, so we’re trying to teach them a new style so it takes a little bit of time,” he said.

Even on Wednesday, it took his team time to settle down after Alta’s hot start as it jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first five minutes as Braxton Horoba scored two of his four-goals.

By the end of the quarter Brighton had rallied to tied the score 4-4.

The pace picked up even more in the second quarter as the teams combined for 12 goals, with Alta stretched its lead to 11-9 by halftime.

During the wild second quarter, Alta’s Cole Collins scored his first goal of the season as did goalie Colton Tueller on a long-range shot at the 6:35 mark of the quarter.

Alta led 11-7 with 1:05 remaining in the second quarter, but Jaxon Webster and Taylor each scored in the final minute to whittle the deficit to 11-9 by halftime.

Alta’s goalie made a half a dozen saves in the third quarter to keep the Hawks in front. Early in the fourth though after Brighton took its first lead of the game at 14-13, it never relinquished the momentum.

“In the fourth quarter, when you get a run like that, you have to capitalize on the momentum,” said O’Donnell.