VIDEO: Hulett, Wien win it for Duxbury boys lacrosse vs. Hingham
VIDEO: Hulett, Wien win it for Duxbury High boys lacrosse in rivalry clash vs. Hingham
CANTON — Coaches often have favorite mottos and clichés to echo at their players when the going gets tough.
‘Do or die’ isn’t necessarily Richard Cleggett’s default, but the Blue Hills Regional Tech boys lacrosse team heard it repeatedly the last few weeks.
The Warriors were on a six-game losing skid, sitting at 4-9 after a two-goal road loss to Upper Cape Tech on May 8. The team needed to win its final five games of the regular season to reach the .500 mark and officially clinch a spot in the Division 4 MIAA state tournament.
“(Saying) ‘do or die’ certainly got old, but it was true. It held its water,” Cleggett said. “(Early on), we had lost to Tri-County. We had lost to Braintree. The motto was to not let it happen again.”
Attack Michael Repucci, of Holbrook, continued his senior-year surge and became the program’s all-time leading scorer en route to Blue Hills’ rattling off the five requisite wins to make the cut. He has 84 goals for the season and 174 for his career, which passed Nick Blaney’s previous high mark of 163 from 2017.
The Warriors (9-9) avenged previous losses to Division 1 foe Braintree (9-7 win), Try-County (13-10 win) and Southeastern (12-6 win), and capped off season sweeps of Westport (14-2 win) and Upper Cape Tech (22-5 win) in the final stretch to secured the their first back-to-back tournament appearance since 2012-13.
Blue Hills sits at No. 40 in the Division 4 power rankings ahead of the bracket’s release on Wednesday. The top 32 seeds and teams above .500 qualify.
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“I wouldn’t say there was doubt,” junior face-off specialist Jack Deangelis, of Braintree, said of the 4-9 start. “Of course some kids were hanging their heads low, but we started to pick up the pace and I think everyone got with the program.”
Repucci set the all-time scoring mark with six strikes in the 12-6 win over Southeastern, the team’s fourth win in the race for five. It was the Warriors’ first win on Southeastern’s field in years, Cleggett said, with defeats coming by margins of 7-5 and 7-6 as the visitor each of the past two seasons. Blue Hills lost, 16-6, at home in the first matchup on May 3.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen our team celebrate that much after a win,” Repucci said. “If we won a state championship, I don’t think it’d be that much. A lot of hooting and hollering, dance battles in the back (of the bus).”
“Everyone was extremely excited,” said senior defenseman Aiden Landers. “Nobody went into it thinking it would be the end of the season.”
That wasn’t the Blue Hills’ only thriller of the stretch.
The Warriors scored seven unanswered goals in the second half to earn a 9-7 comeback victory over Braintree on the road on May 13. That win in particular meant a lot with several Braintree residents on the team, including Cleggett.
Sophomore Gavin Starr, in his first season starting in net, made several key saves in the final two minutes and Repucci netted the winner.
“For us, it was one of the more remarkable wins that we’ve had,” Cleggett said. “Literally at no point did you see any quit in them.”
Cleggett partly attributed the team’s 4-9 start to a flurry of illnesses that spread through the roster right before April vacation, adding “It was something every game. … They fought really hard in those games, too. They didn’t give up or give in. We just got beat.”
Deangelis said the turning point was hearing the victory bell that Upper Cape Tech rings after each of its home wins after Blue Hills suffered a 10-8 loss to UCT on May 8, the final strike of the aforementioned six-game losing streak.
Four wins later, and Warriors clinched the fifth with a 22-5 final over Cape Cod Tech on Senior Day on May 22. Repucci had six goals, Ben Rossini had three and the cast of John Kilpatrick, Jake Logan, Colin Devine, Aiden Landers and Jaxson Norton had one apiece.
“It was a little bit of a Cinderella story run: back against the wall, the only way out was through. And they fought through,” Cleggett said. “They’ve earned every inch of every win, in every sense of the word. They truly do a great job. I’m very proud of them.”
In his run to the scoring title, Repucci, a hopeful to make the team at UMass Dartmouth next year, scored nine goals in his shortened eight-game freshman season, then jumped to 25 as a sophomore and 61 as a junior before 84 as the new record-holder this spring. He grew up playing in Abington due to Holbrook not offering a youth program.
“Every so often, you get a player that walks through the door, that you can really build around and they build other kids up. That’s just what he does. He’s been a rock for us,” Cleggett said. “The goals are great, they’re beautiful, but he’s really an artist in the game sometimes. He does unbelievable things, and he motivates us to get better.”
Repucci will now lead a group of three fellow seniors and eight juniors into postseason fun.
An underdog group? Yes. One deterred from an uphill climb? Never.
“I love the underdog tag because, what do you’ve got to lose? Nothing,” Cleggett said of his team’s tournament approach. “Just play your absolute best.”
