By Vik Agrawal:
GAITHERSBURG, MD - The Quince Orchard Cougars perfect season (15-0) has been stopped by the Linganore Lancers in an upset in the 4A/3A North regional final. The Linganore Lancers won 10-6, in Quince Orchard's first loss of the entire season, in a game that began on Wednesday night but would not conclude until Thursday.

Quince Orchard began the game well with goals by senior attack men Eric Simon and Sean Holliday in the first few minutes giving them a 2-0 lead. The Quince Orchard attack was moving the ball around well to stretch the opposing defense, so they could get easy goals.

The Lancers came back with 2 quick goals by junior midfielder Tyler Thompson, and senior attack man Michael Kenski, and tied the game at the end of the first quarter. Linganore's goals both came off face-off wins and forced turnovers by their defense.

In the second quarter, the Lancers jumped out to a 3-2 lead scoring a goal off a faceoff once again, this time in the first 10 seconds. Linganore played great defense by shutting down the trio of attack men that has dominated for Quince Orchard this season, Sean Holliday, Eric Simon, and Eli Tolstoi who had combined for 151 goals on the season entering the regional final.

The Lancers made it very difficult for the Cougars to score. The Linganore goalie RJ Tischler had 6 saves in the first half, and really helped boost the confidence of his other defensive teammates. Linganore never looked back from the lead they obtained and went up 5-2 at halftime.

To start the second half, Quince Orchard came out firing, but the Linganore defense had an answer to everything the Cougars threw at them. Quince Orchard's goalie Michael Chaing kept them in the game in the 3rd quarter, but the Linganore offense found a way around his heroics to score 3 more goals; leaving the score 8-3 at the end of the period.

Coming out of the gate, Linganore scored another goal in the first 6 seconds of the 4th quarter by senior attack man Michael Kenski to go up 9-3. The goal put the Cougars in a desperate position...a position they had not seen much during their perfect regular season.

During a timeout called by Quince Orchard Coach Michael Kowalick, he tried to motivate his team to overcome the deficit. They quickly answered with two quick goals by senior midfielder Andrew Korol and senior attack man Sean Holliday, making the Linganore lead only 9-5 now.

The game came to a sudden rain delay leaving the game in halt with 5 min 30 seconds left and Quince Orchard down two men to penalties.

The game started back up the next night (Thursday), with the Cougars wanting to pull off a miracle. Liganore prevented that miracle by stopping any momentum the Cougars tried to pick up.

Liganore ended Quince Orchard's perfect season on day 2 with a 10-6 win. Liganore will next move on to the state semifinals against Dulaney, which is an eight-time State Champion. If Liganore continues to play like they did against a powerful team in Quince Orchard, especially the defense and goalie RJ Tischler, they have a decent chance to win the 4A/3A state title.