Vail Mountain School breaks up Aspen zone for big win

The first quarter of Thursday’s game between Vail Mountain School and Aspen was, in a word, bizarre.

“They wanted to play in their zone. I didn’t want to let them play in their zone,” said Gore Rangers boys lacrosse coach Stephen Michel.

“So, we just forced them to come out and play us.”

Leading 1-0, Jack Schwartz and Charlie Vidal awkwardly burned the final 8 minutes and 52 seconds off the first-quarter clock playing catch behind the Aspen net.

“All you need to do in lacrosse is win by one,” Vidal said. “So we were kind of testing them, seeing if they would get out of the zone so we could run our offense, but they didn’t want to do it.”

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Aspen employed a similar strategy in a 5-2 loss to Battle Mountain on Monday.

“Their goalie is, if he’s not the best goalie in the state, I don’t know who is,” Michel said, referring to Treven Ward, a 2023 all-state honorable mention selection as a sophomore. “They’re a very well-coached team and that’s why, knowing they’re coached that well to do what they’ve been doing — we had to get them out of that (zone).”

Eventually, the Gore Rangers made Ward appear to be anything but the best in the state. Vidal sliced and diced the Skier defense at will, scoring five goals in a 9-3 victory to push VMS to 3-1.

“We had a rougher start to the season. We weren’t playing as good of lacrosse as we wanted, but we came out with energy, played a great game against a great team and were able to prevail,” Vidal said. “Great feeling — it should be motivation for the rest of the season.”

Vidal contributed to his team’s first three scores, finding Erik Jaerbyn early in the first and scoring twice himself in the second. He wound up from the wing with nine seconds left to put VMS up 3-1 at half. When senior Evan Sapp bounced a 10-yard overhand release straight up the gut early in the second half, the floodgates had officially opened.

“It’s all about work and grit. We didn’t have the grit in the past games,” Sapp said of his team, which defeated Summit twice but lost to Battle Mountain 16-4 to start the year. “It’s all about getting the ground balls and the little things in the game that can make a difference, and we did that today.”

Jay McCormack won the ensuing face off, perpetuating Vail Mountain’s time-of-possession preeminence.

“We won the middle of the field today,” Michel said. “It puts pressure on them. We try to make them overvalue their possessions and that gets the nerves up a little bit where you think you have to score on a possession.”

With 7:50 left, Vidal juked past a Skier at the restraining line for a pretty score. Two minutes later, he was at it again. Sliding horizontally from the near side of the field to the far, he channeled his inner Patrick Mahomes with an against-the-grain side-arm. The audible sound of the ball pinging off the metal sidebar past a deflated Ward into the net was dwarfed by the boisterous reaction from the VMS bench. Leading 6-1, the Gore Rangers were having a good time.

“We just needed the confidence,” said Michel, whose injury-depleted team seems now to be gelling. 

“We’ve had a short bench and those guys have needed to come in and play to their ability. They needed the confidence in themselves and that’s what I think we learned today. We realized we could play lacrosse.”

Aspen captain Andrew Palmaz split the VMS defense from midfield to score with 4 minutes to go, but Vidal closed out the quarter — and any hope of a Skier rally — with a dazzling score in the final minute. The junior jogged through the casually flawless finish of an all-too-easy overhead shot into the left corner.

“We kind of froze them up in that first quarter by holding the ball so much,” Vidal said in explaining how VMS was able to turn a static first-half into a high-scoring second.

“It kind of froze their zone up, got their legs stiff. Second and third quarter we were able to exploit that, run a little more fast paced, give-and-go action, getting some easy looks on the goal.”

Landon Thurber scored five minutes into the fourth for Aspen, but Jaerbyn and Sapp each answered within a minute of one another, tallying their second goals of the game.

Sapp came around the left side of the crease from the X with the ball in his dominant hand with 4:37 remaining.

“I wasn’t able to get it into my left hand so I just kind of shoveled it into the goal, no-look and just prayed,” he said of the nail in the coffin. For Sapp, the league win “changes the whole mindset” in terms of 2024 expectations.

“You don’t know how good you are until you have everyone on the same page, everyone doing their job,” he continued.

“Today is just a testament of what we can do further in the season.”