NEWBURYPORT — The worst part about it for Brendan Grossman was that he didn’t have any symptons.
But for the past month, the Newburyport goalie had been forced to watch his team from the sideline, as it won the CAL Kinney title and earned a huge program win against nemesis Norwell on the final day of the regular season. Grossman had been diagnosed with mononucleosis (mono), and even though he felt completely fine and didn’t show symptons, he of course couldn’t play over the fear of the lacrosse ball getting hurled near his spleen at 80 mph.
So all May, all Grossman could do was watch backup Ben Buchmayr perform admirably in his spot.
Needless to say, it was agonizing.
But on Monday, Brendan was back!
Having finally been cleared to play, Grossman made his triumphant return for Newburyport’s opening game of the Division 3 state tournament. The senior captain made three big saves in the first half before getting pulled, as his No. 6 Clippers were all over No. 27 Groton-Dunstable in a 16-2 blowout. It’s a victory that advances the Clippers to their third straight Round of 16, where they’ll host either No. 22 Apponequet or No. 11 Shawsheen Tech (time/date TBD).
And they’ll be doing it with their starting goalie back.
“It was great,” said Grossman. “Was a pretty slow game today, so kind of a good one to get back for to ease into it. It was pretty frustrating being out. Obviously I didn’t want to have symptons, but feeling like I could play and not being able to play was tough. But we’re back at the perfect time.”
Of course, as soon as he was cleared to get back to practice, the captain did all he could to return to game speed.
“He looked good,” said Newburyport coach Josh Wedge. “He didn’t have a lot of rubber today, but he made some good saves. He’s been working hard the last week, doing some double sessions with our goalies coach trying to get back up to speed. Today he did a session a few hours before the game, then did his normal warm-up.”
Thankfully, Grossman’s teammates made it easy for him on Monday.
Thanks to a pair of goals from Colin Fuller (3g, 3a), along with tallies from Asher Kinsey (2g) and Eli Sirota (1g, 1a), Newburyport opened up a 4-0 lead before Groton-Dunstable got on the board. And even after Grossman let up his lone goal of the game, the Clippers (18-1) responded with Davis Pons (3g) and Luke MacIsaac (2g) both scoring to make it 7-1 after the first quarter.
And the rout was on from there.
Carter Scott scored all four of his goals in the second quarter, and Sam Craig also found the back of the net to punctuate a 14-1 halftime lead. There was some action for Grossman during the opening frame, leading to his three saves, but defenders Aidan Martyn, Kian Markos, Jack Miller, Brian Lucy, Hayden Scott and Henry Walker made sure he stayed pretty clean during the second.
“The thing right now is that we’re finally healthy for the first time since mid-April,” said Wedge. “In practice, our offense has looked scary. I don’t know what he ended up with today, but Luke MacIsaac is really, really good. Getting him back, I mean, we realized in early April that he was one our more talented offensive players. As deep as we are offensively, he’s kind of a guy that can do everything. He just makes our offense more dynamic, and with him in the lineup, we’re going to end up with eight guys with at least 30 points.
“And that’s pretty nuts.”
From there, the reserves handled the entire second half under a running clock.
It will only get tougher moving forward, but Newburyport — now back to being fully loaded — will be ready for anybody.
“Do the same thing we’ve been doing all year and take each game seriously,” said Grossman. “We did a good job of that today. Usually with teams like this, earlier in the year we sort of struggled with going into these games without the right mindset, expecting to win. But I think today we came out firing on both ends of the field. So it’s important to treat every game like the hardest game.
“We’re expecting it to be Shawsheen Tech in the next game, and they’re a serious team, so we need to come out in that one ready to play.”