Minutes after making and winning his second consecutive start of the season in No. 8 Stevenson's 16-6 rout of York at Mustang Stadium in Owings Mills Friday night, junior goalkeeper Connor Skeen still wasn't sure whether he had played well enough to warrant being named by coach Paul Cantabene as the team's starter for the rest of the season.
"That's not for me to say," said the Towson resident and graduate, who made seven saves. "I've just got to keep doing my best, cleaning my game up a little bit. I think I should have had a few [more saves], but in practice, I just want to keep going hard. That's his decision."
Cantabene took the mystery out of the situation, announcing that Skeen – not junior Ben Richards (Bel Air) who had started the first 10 games and registered a 9.45 goals-against average and a .518 save percentage – would continue to man the goal until further notice.
"I think overall, he played really calm and did a good job," Cantabene said. "He needs to work on his clearing a little bit [where he committed two turnovers], but he hasn't been in there as often to understand those situations. That's all right. We'll fix that. But I thought he did a good job. He played real steady and smart. It was good to see him have a good outing. We were hoping he would play this way."
Skeen needed to make just four saves in Tuesday night's 20-2 demolition of Commonwealth Conference rival Hood, but knew the game against York would be a tougher challenge.
"I think the start the other day was kind of a test," said Skeen, who has posted a 3.66 goals-against average and a .650 save percentage. "Today was a big chance for me. I was definitely ready for it. The team was really supportive of me at practice. Every time at practice, they asked me, 'Are you ready? We've got your back.' That was definitely great."
Circling back to "Three Things to Watch" …
1) Targeting York's goalie. Junior Caleb Abney had entered the game with a 7.29 goals-against average and a .595 save percentage. But the 6-foot-5, 245-pound Forest Hill resident and Fallston graduate was peppered by the Mustangs (8-4), who located 27 of their 40 shots on net. All 16 of their goals were assisted, and Cantabene said the coaches simply trusted the players to find high-percentage shooting lanes.
"I think we've been harping too much on these goalies," he said. "We would say, 'Hey, he's a good goalie. You need to shoot here.' We've got to let our guys play. We've got good shooters, we've got to let them shoot and do things. We didn't really bring him up to them. We just said, 'Shoot the ball to good spots.' I think the way our offense worked and how active we were off the ball, moving gave us great shots."
2) Targeting York's attack. The Spartans (8-6) got six goals and three of four assists from their starting trio of senior Tyler Hutson (Winters Mill), freshman Dillon Hannah (Catonsville) and junior Andrew Gamble. But the starting midfield of junior Dan Kaplan (Howard), sophomore Christopher Lees and freshman Matt Whitcher combined for zero goals on seven shots and zero assists. Stevenson senior defenseman Callum Robinson credited senior long-stick midfielder Josh Rufolo (Chapelgate Christian) and senior short-stick defensive midfielders Connor Curro (St. Paul's) and Joey Granata with blanketing the first midfield.
"We shut them down all game," Robinson said. "As a defensive unit, it's just so comforting when you can be slow to slide to your midfield because you have that confidence in the midfield group to know that they're not going to get beat and you can play your attackmen nice and tight and make sure they're not getting any cheap goals."
3) Targeting turnovers. The Mustangs turned the ball over 24 times, which exceeded the average of 21.5 giveaways they committed in their four losses. Fortunately for the team, which failed to clear the ball six times, York couldn't capitalize on those chances and had its own problems protecting the ball, finishing with 28 turnovers.
"We just had a few little things where we forced it," Cantabene said. "We didn't clear it really well. A couple of middies made some poor choices. I think they had a couple turnovers within a couple seconds. But I don't think the turnovers were that bad. We did a good job of controlling the ball on the offensive end. So I don't think the turnover numbers are really indicative of how we played tonight."