It was still 30 minutes before game time, but 10-year-old Jake Imbs was already wearing his game-face. The whole Imbs family, wearing the fluorescent green colors of the New York Lizards, had driven from Orlando to watch the championship game. Jake was sitting on the concourse, eating a sandwich.
And while most of the record 8,674 fans who attended the Major League Lacrosse championship Saturday at Kennesaw State’s Fifth Third Bank Stadium didn’t travel quite as far, there were fans from throughout the metro area in attendance.
David Goddard brought his 8-year-old Nolan, an aspiring goalkeeper, all the way from Monroe to watch the game. Jacob Spurlock and Cameron Carabajal, high school teammates made the 90-minute drive from Fayette County.
It was worth the drive, fighting the traffic, shelling out $10 to park and standing in the long lines just to get into the park. The Lizards, one of the league’s original teams, won the Steinfeld Cup for the first time since 2003 with a 15-12 victory against the Rochester Rattlers.
New York, the No. 1 seed and considered the best defensive team in the league, came back from a four-goal deficit in the first half. The Lizards (11-4) tied the game at 12 with 11:51 on Rob Pannel’s fourth goal of the game, then went ahead 38 seconds later when Mike Stone took a pass from Paul Rabil and beat Rochester keeper John Galloway. It was Long Island’s first lead of the game.
Rabil, a veteran midfielder and two-time league MVP, was chosen the player of the game. He scored three goals and had three assists.
“We’ve been doing it all year long, digging ourselves a hole in the first quarter and having to come back,” Rabil said. “We’re used to that. It was just a matter of us starting to burn a hole in the back of the net.”
New York keeper Drew Adams allowed only one goal in the fourth quarter and made at least three point-blank saves. He saved 11 of the 23 shots that Rochester attempted.
“We played hard tonight,” Adams said. “We were down the whole game. We battled through our ups and downs. I couldn’t be more proud of these guys. I couldn’t be happier from this team.”
Rochester (8-7), which lost in the championship game at Kennesaw State last year, got three goals from Mark Matthews and two each from Jordan Wolf and Kyle Denhoff.
When the game was finished, the crowd, which was loaded with youth league players, stayed around to get autographs from the players, who willingly obliged.
“Someone asked me about putting a team in Atlanta, a non-traditional market,” league founder “Body by Jake” Steinfeld said. “Look at this crowd. These people are into it and nobody left.”
The new Atlanta Blaze team will compete next season. The team was loudly cheered every time it was mentioned on the loudspeaker and a scrum broke out whenever T-shirts were lobbed into the crowd.
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