The Ponte Vedra Sharks lacrosse team faced archrival Nease on the road Friday night and came home with a 15-11 win.
Ponte Vedra jumped out to an early lead seven seconds into the match on Andrew O’Dare’s goal. Three minutes later CD James scored to put the Sharks up by two. The Panthers would answer with a goal by Hunter Kobin but Matt Keeler, O’Dare and James pushed the Sharks advantage to 5-1. Goals by Nease’s Joey Oliveira and O’Dare made the score 6-2 at the end of the first half.
The Sharks threatened to run away with the game early in the third quarter opening up a 10-3 advantage but the Panthers offense came up strong scoring four unanswered goals. From there on the teams traded goals. Nease closed to within three, 12-9, on Oliveira’s second goal before the Sharks iced the game with three goals in the final 5 minutes.
O’Dare and Reid Smith lead the Shark with scorers with 4 goals. CD James and Matt Keeler added 2 while Jack Burk, Clay Welch and Ben Buchanan each scored a goal. Later in the week the Sharks topped Bartram Trail 16-6 to improve to 11-0 for the season.
Shark scorers were Reid Smith and Matt Keeler with three scores. James, Welch and Devin Naidoo scored twice and O’Dare, Buchanan and David Hoffman scored single goals.
Ponte Vedra plays at home on Wednesday March 9th against Episcopal at 7:30 pm then meets Jupiter on Friday March 11th at 7:30 pm.
