BOURNE — No person in Massachusetts has ever made snow angels in June.
Well, actually, scratch that. The Norwell High boys lacrosse team knows a guy.
Matt Panttila was knocked down upon firing in his third goal late in the Division 4 state championship game against Cohasset when the junior attack landed on his back and performed a new celebration.
“I saw it on Instagram, so I might as well do it,” Panttila said with a laugh. “After, the ref came up to me and said, ‘Don’t do any more of that.’ … But it felt amazing.”
The rally continued as Panttila later scored for a fourth time to seal the Clippers’ 11-6 victory at Mass. Maritime Academy in Bourne on Saturday. The win stamps Norwell’s third title in the last four years.
The Clippers won Division 3 crowns in 2022 and 2023 before dropping down to Division 4 last year. Norwell, the bracket’s third seed, knocked off the rival Skippers (No. 1 seed; 21-3) to top last springs finish in the semifinals and send its seven seniors off with a third state title in their careers.
“It’s an amazing experience for all of those kids,” head coach Josh Stolp said. “I think they come to practice wanting to win another state title. Maybe it’s a little greedy, but that’s just how it is.”
For Panttila, Saturday’s four-goal burst was fueled by a little friendly trash talk at home. His older sister, Holly, a future Vanderbilt University student, powered the Norwell girls lacrosse team to a state championship win over Cohasset two days ago.
“We were talking about who was going to do better,” said Panttila. “We both thought we were going to win; we ‘re confident and we love our teams.”
Panttila and a majority of his teammates were in attendance at Babson College in Wellesley that day to witness the girls team get the job done, and perhaps to also see an early example of how to outlast nemesis Cohasset.
“We saw them win and said, ‘Now, we have to win,'” said senior attack Oliver Rice, who graduates as the Clippers’ all-time leading points scorer. “It definitely put the pressure on, but we rose to the occasion. We got it done.”
“We were actually nervous because it’s so hard to do that,” Stolp said of the two programs winning in the same year. “We made sure that (our players) understood that was (the girls’) moment (on Thursday), and we had to focus on our moment. Now, they can both celebrate that together.”
On Saturday, sophomore FOGO Wyatt Franssen starred in the circle to hand possession to the Clippers’ attack unit of Panttila (4 goals), junior Jake McGuirk (2), senior Joey McCarthy (2), Rice (1), junior Teddy Glynn (1) and freshman Drew Vroman (1).
“He was unreal all year,” Stolp said of Franssen. “He’s been a huge force for us.”
Vroman struck with 7:01 remaining to build the Clippers’ largest lead of the day, 10-5. On the possession prior, a goal by Cohasset’s Gus Greene (7:34) was wiped away by an offensive penalty.
Vroman’s score continued a run of four straight Norwell goals from the 4:05 mark of the third quarter to the 7:01 mark of the fourth, when Panttila put the finishing touches on the win with a goal in the crease after the Skippers’ scrambling defense momentarily left an unoccupied cage.
“He’s one of those players that sometimes gets overlooked,” Stolp said of Panttila. “But when he’s on, he can be very dangerous turning the corner. He’s got a great shot when he’s pulling it right. Today, he had no fear.”
“It was definitely hard,” Panttila said of his four-goal performance. “I was getting beat. My arms are all swollen, but I just decided I was confident in myself and I thought I could beat the guy in front of me. I guess it worked out.”
Norwell finishes the season with a 17-6 record. The team endured two rough spots this spring — a skid of three losses in four games in mid-April, and then a three-game week of setbacks from May 19-26 which was started by a dramatic defeat at Cohasset in OT.
In total, those regular-season losses came to Falmouth (6-5), Westford Academy (14-9 final), Westwood (11-5 final), Scituate (14-13 final), Newburyport (10-7 final) and these Skippers (12-11 final).
All of those opponents, aside from the Skippers, are in higher divisions. Norwell’s South Shore neighbor, Scituate, won the Division 3 championship on Saturday.
“They braced playing these harder teams all year long,” Stolp said. “We have a very difficult schedule and we lose a lot of games because of it. We get beat up a little bit, but they’ve learned a lot from it. I think they embrace that challenge.”
The Clippers graduate seven seniors from this year’s championship team — Rice, McCarthy, midfielder Andrew Lazcano, defender Matt Cerrutti, attack Nolen Lestage, midfielder Thomas Scully and defender Ryan Daly.
A class of 16 juniors is poised to defend the hardware come next spring.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Rice said. “Couldn’t do it with a better group of guys. … At Norwell, we’re a bunch of dogs. That’s all we got.”
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Norwell boys lacrosse defeats Cohasset to win state championship