Alex Gossard's hat-trick was not enough to carry Wilmington in their loss 17-8 loss to Transylvania Saturday as the Quakers lost momentum late in the first quarter and were never able to recover.


Gossard (Galloway, OH/Hilliard Bradley) continues his hot streak in the attack with his second consecutive game registering a three-goal outing.

Wilmington started out strong and functioning on all cylinders for the better part of the first quarter. Austin Johnston (Columbus, OH/Hilliard Bradley) had the defense operating in a systematic fashion with great communication and coverage on their secondary slide package. Gossard was in complete control of the attack settling the Quakers in their sets and moving the ball to get the match-ups they wanted to drive to goal.

The Wilmington attack got several quality opportunities to build upon the early 1-0 lead they had through the first quarter, but the Transylvania goalie came up with some critical saves to keep the score manageable. The Pioneers' goalie did the job of keeping the Quakers from adding to their early cushion and the momentum began to swing late in the first quarter when the Pioneers put away some lightly contested chances and snuck in a late first-quarter goal.

The Wilmington defense began to let in soft goals in the second quarter and the Pioneers took advantage. The Pioneers added five goals in the second quarter which gave them a dominant command of the game as the Wilmington defense couldn't control the TU attack.

"We started out the first 12 minutes of the game playing as good as we have all season," said head coach Domenic Marzano. "Our defense was communicating, our slide packages were working and we had our defense sealed tight and then we stopped talking to one another on defense and began to leave too much space and time for their attack to do so some serious damage to us."

Ground balls, face-off wins and clear percentage were all virtually even without one team dominating the game from those statistical points, but the Quakers were not able to finish their shots. The inability of making the most out of their scoring opportunities truly took away from the team's momentum early in the game and made it a tough uphill battle to climb back in to the game.

"We have suffered all season from focusing for all 60 minutes which is the case when a team scores with 0:05 seconds left in the quarter," said Marzano. "As a coaching staff we have been stressing the importance of communication throughout the entirety of the game, because those one to three minutes of lackadaisical play will be exposed by a team where they'll tuck away a few goals on us and by the time we know it the game is out of reach."

The second half brought some positive points with the connection between Gossard and Jalen Jackson (Hilliard, OH/Bradley), who found one another on several goals this afternoon. Jackson added another goal, three assists and 11 ground balls, while Kirby Dearth (Hilliard, OH/Darby) added a two-goal, two-assist outing. Corey Stevens (Franklin, OH/Springboro) and Garyck Todd (Pickerington, OH/Central) contributed to the Quaker's final tally and saw signs of Kyle Combs (Cincinnati, OH/Indian Hill) becoming increasingly comfortable in the attack.
The Quakers take the field again 3 p.m. Saturday when they visit Thiel in Greenville, PA.