Henne, Caruso Power Port Past North Shore

The Port Washington varsity lacrosse team breezed through its home opener Wednesday morning with a 13-4 rout of North Shore at a rainy and cold Schreiber High School.

Brandon Henne had four goals and two assists and Owen Caruso added three and three, respectively, for the Vikings, who have won their first two non-league games by a combined 27-12 score. They opened the season with a 14-8 victory over Locust Valley on March 23.

"We did a nice job coming together as a team," coach Joseph Mascaretti said. "We played together on offense and the guys are starting to click and work together at both ends of the field. We had five or six days of practice from the last game to today so it gave us a chance to add some more things in and see how they looked today."

Both teams had trouble sustaining any offense during a rainy first quarter, but the Vikings did manage to cash in on a pair of power-play opportunities to take a 3-1 lead through the first 12 minutes. Henne opened the scoring almost three minutes into the game, and with North Shore's Mike Divicenzo off for slashing, Jeff Froccaro made it 2-0 when he one-timed Caruso's feed past goalie Alec Volpe at 6:15 of the opening stanza. Caruso completed his three-point quarter by scoring on an eight-footer from the right slot during another power play with 1:33 left.

"That was one of the things we wanted to improve on from game one to today," Mascaretti said of the power play. "We ran the plays the way we were supposed to rather than freelancing and when we ran the plays correctly, it worked out for us."

The Vikings blew it open in the second quarter by scoring four times in a 3:30 span to make it 7-1. Jake Froccaro, who had an astounding eight goals in the opener, scored twice in 80 seconds near the midway point, with the latter coming on a sharp-angle shot from the left side that somehow eluded Volpe. Henne recorded his second goal of the game just 12 seconds later and Breig Bevilacque got the first of his two tallies with 5:39 left.

"We came out pretty cold, but luckily our goalie made a couple of key stops and we finally got it back in the second," Henne said. "We won some key faceoffs, possessed the ball and did a good job of putting the ball on the cage."

Port Washington continued to pour it on after the break with five more goals in the third quarter, including two more by Henne and single tallies from Caruso, Jeff Froccaro and Bevilacque. Caruso capped the scoring and his hat trick with another power-play goal with 8:17 left, the lone marker of the fourth quarter.

"It's really based on the other team," Henne said of his performance. "I just took it to the net and luckily it went in a couple of times."

The Vikings did have a couple of injury scares late in the game. Jeff Froccaro was temporarily hurt when he was slashed by a North Shore defender early in the fourth quarter, while Henne took a ball to the throat with just under three minutes left. Both said they were fine after the game.

The Vikings held a 34-16 advantage in shots and gained more than half of the ground balls. Goalie Cody White helped out by making five saves, including a partial breakaway early in the fourth quarter.

Jake Venditto scored twice and Jake Alverson and Greg Puskuldjian had the other goals for North Shore, who dropped to 0-3 on the season while being outscored 32-10.

Schreiber will make the short trip to Roslyn to take on the winless Bulldogs next Wednesday before facing Nassau powerhouse Farmingdale three days later.

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