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Miner boys hold off late Bingham rally

Tucker Mirams darts around a Bingham defender on Tuesday afternoon at Quinn s Junction. Christopher Reeves/The Park Record
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Heading into the fourth quarter of Tuesday night’s PCHS boys’ lacrosse game against Bingham at Quinn’s Junction, the Miners had a pretty comfortable 8-2 lead.

However, they’d test exactly how comfortable that lead actually was, allowing Bingham to dominate the final period before time expired and Park City escaped with a 9-6 victory.

Tucker Mirams, Cole Flinders and Justin Pickard all scored in the first quarter to put Park City up 3-0. Pickard and Griffin Seifert extended the lead to 5-0 before Bingham scored its first goal, making the score 5-1 at halftime.

In the third quarter, the Miners dominated, getting two more goals from Flinders and one from Carson Dutkanych, while allowing only one goal, to make the score 8-2.

But the final 10 minutes proved to be difficult for the Miners. After Trent Clifford scored to give Park City a 9-2 advantage, Bingham rattled off four straight goals to make the lead feel a lot less comfortable before the game finally ended.

Park City coach Andy Langendorf said his young team needs to focus on finishing off games and holding leads in the fourth quarter.

"I think we executed well in the first half," he said. "Then we got a little goal-hungry and we started to drift away from our system."

That’s when the Miners get into trouble, he added.

"Bingham’s a good team and they saw the opportunity and brought the game back within reach," he said.

Langendorf is happy with the win, but said this game will serve as a teaching opportunity for his coaching staff.

"It’s one step at a time for us," he said. "We’ve got a young team and we’ve got a lot of new things in place right now. It’s a victory, but we’ve got stuff to work on and that’s exactly what we’ll do. We’ll get back on the practice field and get back after it."

He said his team needs to play with more confidence, which is something he and his coaching staff will instill with positive reinforcement.

"In Park City, we like to talk about things we want to do right rather than about what we’re doing wrong," he said. "We’ll work our conversation with our players from a positive perspective and get down to business. We have good athletes, we just need to have confident athletes."

Overall, Langendorf was pleased with the team effort, and noted a couple of standouts, including goalie Sheridan Buchholz and midfielder Jackson Burton.

"Sheridan’s a great goalie," he said. "We actually have two great goalies this year with him and Ian Sime. Nobody’s established themselves as the No. 1 goalie. Ian played really well the other night and had an absolutely great game. We’re really happy with what we’ve got between the pipes both of them are young and both of them are playing well."

And, he added, with Burton handling face-off duties, the Miners are in a good position to score more often than not.

"You stand a good chance to win games when you’re facing off at 80 and 90 percent," Langendorf said. "That gives you a lot of good possessions. We need to capitalize on that because, late in the season, that means a lot. We need to turn those face-off possessions into goals and then we’ll be able to stand with anybody in the state."

So that’s exactly what the Miners will work on ahead of their next game, which is scheduled for Tuesday, April 1, against Lone Peak at Quinn’s Junction.

"We’ve got to clean up our possessions," Langendorf said. "We have a bit of a tendency to try to force the ball where it doesn’t belong. We’ve got to have some patience that’s what we’re trying to teach to our players."

Tuesday’s game is set to begin at 4:30 p.m.


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