High school boys lacrosse: Alta caps great week by jumping all over East for comfortable victory

On the heels of an impressive win over region rival Brighton midweek, Alta continued its recent run of good form with another statement win Friday night.

Spurred on by a dominant face-off performance in the first half from junior Kellen Torina — who is approaching 500 face-off wins— Alta jumped all over East and then put things on cruise control in the second half for a 15-7 victory.

The Hawks led 10-2 at the half, and even though coach Brandon Horoba thought the second half was a bit of a letdown, it was still a comfortable win over a quality 5A team.

“We’ve been playing really well. Practices have been high energy, excitement, and it’s been carrying over into the games,” said Horoba, whose team improved to 10-2 with the win.

“Credit to East for fighting and kind of making us not walk out of here with an easy win.”

JJ Massi led the way offensively for the Hawks, with Beckham Horoba chipping in with three goals and Cole Haddock adding two.

Much of Alta’s early success was the result of winning possessions one face-off after another. After East’s Cade Black opened the scoring just 19 seconds into the game, Torina proceeded to win the next face-offs to help his team build on the momentum of each goal.

“Obviously having possessions is the name of the game, and so the more possessions he gets for us the better it is for us,” said coach Horoba.

“We keep the ball down on our offensive end and away from the defensive end, it tends to bode well for us.”

By the end of the first quarter, all that extra possession had allowed Alta to push the lead to 5-1. The Hawks didn’t score immediately off the face-off each time, but when they did lose the ball, coach Horoba thought his team was aggression to win it back.

“We had a couple of our D-poles playing really aggressive and causing a little bit of chaos and getting them to turn the ball over, which was good for us, and then when the ball was loose, we were kind of flying to it and picking them up and getting it back to our offense,” he said.

That momentum carried over into the second quarter as Alta pushed the lead to 9-1 on a pair of goals each from Massi and Haddock.

“There were times when we were getting our shots, guys were taking it and placing good shots, putting them low, and there were some really good times where the ball was moving really quick and we got guys wide open in good spots to take good shots,” said Horoba.

With three of its two four attacking players back from last year and everyone defensive but its goalie, expectations were always going to be high for Alta entering the season, and the Hawks have lived up to it amid playing a difficult schedule.