Tuesday
September 26, 2023 
The Central Bucks East boys lacrosse team needs to hit its turning point.
The Patriots just may have done so on Tuesday with a decisive 13-5 win over host Council Rock North in a Suburban One League National Conference game.
CB East got the first two goals of the game from Ryan Stout and Ryan Carroll to take a 2-0 lead after the first quarter.
Stout had three more goals and Carroll one in the second quarter and the Patriots took a 6-2 lead into halftime.
CR North put a few more in the cage in the third quarter, but CB East got goals from Carroll and Matt Melendez to hang in there and end the third frame with an 8-5 lead.
They closed out the game strong with five unanswered goals in the fourth quarter to seal the win. Stout had a pair of goals, while Jonah Osborne, Melendez and Nick Knepp each had a single tally for the winners.
“In this game, we got off to a good start and we wanted to keep the pressure on, keep scoring and send a message that we’re not to be screwed around with,” said Stout, a senior who will continue his playing career at Sacred Heart.
“We’re at that point in the season where we have to start winning the games we need to win and this was a good one for us.”
CB East is now 5-6 overall, inching its way to .500, and 2-2 in the SOL National.
“We had a rougher start this year than we’re used to,” Stout said. “The last three years we’ve really had pretty scratchless seasons and this year it started out a little different but that’s fine. From my experience I know that we are able to rally at this point in the season. Nothing’s lost and the only thing we can do is climb up. I like being the underdog.”
The Patriots lost to Central Bucks West 5-3 and a 9-8 heartbreaker to North Penn.
“We’re not used to that,” Stout said. “We’re not used to losing to West.
We’ll have more chances against league teams and we have to win those games.
“I told the guys as we were coming into this game, ‘This has to be the turning point, right now.’ We know how to play the game. It took us a little bit longer to meld than we’re used to but I think we’re finally jelling and I think we’re picking up some steam.”
The Patriots are back in action Thursday in an SOL National Conference game at Central Bucks South at 7 p.m.
Carroll, a senior, feels that the team is finding itself.
“I feel like it’s crunch time,” said Carroll, who will continue his career at Catholic University while majoring in finance. “We’re hitting the stretch in our season where we’ve got a lot of league games coming up I think we’ll finish off strong. We got it rolling in this game. We played well as a team and that’s what we’ve been lacking so far.
“We’re used to winning most of our games but we struggled early and I think it’s because we didn’t flow as a team. We had a bunch of new players and we graduated a ton of guys from last year but we started to get it flowing in this game and I think it’s going to be easier from here on out. North is a good team. They had a bunch of great players but I think we just played as a team and stepped up.
“We had different people scoring. We have a lot of threats all around.
Stout’s a great player and whenever they go and lock him off like they were doing here, then other people have to step up and that’s what happened for us in this game. Everyone’s coming together.”
