Haddonfield’s 5/6A boys lacrosse team is on a streak this month.
Starting on May 10 with a win at the Moorestown Lacrosse Festival, the team had the opportunity to play against local teams and some from Pennsylvania. They won all five games, also beating Moorestown.
The team is part of the Haddonfield Youth Lacrosse Club, a borough recreation program whose teams play in the South Jersey Youth Lacrosse League. All the boys are either in the fifth or sixth grade, with 10 sixth-graders and five fifth-graders.
The winning continued on May 16, when the boys ultimately won the South Jersey league’s championship. Jamie Chiarieri is the team’s head coach and has been coaching for 10 years. The assistant coach is Mike Moyer.
“So at the end of this season for the fifth and sixth grade level, the league has a playoff at the A division,” Chiarieri explained. “These guys won three games last week, and ultimately won the championship last Friday night (the 16th) against Medford.”
The championship resulted from 5/6A’s five points against Medford’s two.
“The group of them have been playing together for a few years, so it’s fun to see them come through and end up with a championship,” Chiarieri noted.
Many of the players started playing at about 5 and 6 years old and have been together since. During this year’s playoffs, they beat Washington Township, Kingsway and Medford.
Chiarieri expressed his excitement about the wins against Kingsway and Medford.
“They had a really good regular season, but we also had a lot of injuries, and we had some sickness throughout the season,” she acknowledged. “So we actually had played Medford twice during the regular season and lost to them twice, and then our only other loss was the Kingsway.
“So these guys had three losses during the regular season, and then the playoffs …” Chiarieri added. “So ultimately, we’re able to compete with the teams that we had lost to earlier in the year.”
The coach was not the only one who expressed excitement over wins in the semifinal and championship rematches against Medford and Kingsway. Several of the players did, too.
“We’re happy to beat them,” said Ryder English. “We lost to them last year in the championship, too, so you’re happy to beat Medford specifically.”
Chiarieri contends that lacrosse is a good sport for kids to get into because of the amount of action involved, and because its rules and skills are common in other sports like basketball and football.
