Cougars’ impressive season ends with quarterfinal loss to Bow

The ConVal boys’ lacrosse team beat Kennett Thursday for the Cougars’ first playoff win since 2022, but the ride came to an end at Bow in the quarterfinals Saturday, capping off an excellent season for the boys.

ConVal (9-7) earned the seventh seed in Division III and the right to host No. 10 Kennett at home Thursday. The Cougars came out aggressively and set the tone right off the bat with a Henry Vivilecchia goal just a minute and a half into the game.

“That was our whole game plan,” ConVal head coach Bob Taylor said after the game, “having long possessions on offense and scoring with purpose.”

ConVal added four more goals in the first half, as Vivilecchia struck once more, Henry Taylor and Spencer Bishop added one each, and Wetu Selby electrified the crowd with an end-to-end run culminating in his first career goal, and the Cougars led 5-1 going into the break. 

But Kennett, after their long season and long bus ride, wasn’t going down quietly. 

“They’re a strong team,” coach Taylor said. “You can tell that they’re fighters. They played some really tough games against good opponents and got some Ws against good teams. Nobody makes it into the playoffs just to lay down, so we knew they were going to bring it.”

The Eagles scored twice in quick succession in the third period to cut the score to 5-3, and momentum was dangerously close to shifting Kennett’s way. That’s when senior Max Sweeney stepped up. 

“I’ve been on this team for four years,” Sweeney said. “I just had the mindset of winning. Been to playoffs twice, both times got bounced first round and did not want to do that this year. I kept my head up. Just needed to win. That’s all I had in my head — we need to win.”

Sweeney scored once to end the third and again to open the fourth, and it’s a good thing he did, because the Eagles weren’t done yet. A pair of late Kennett goals cut the ConVal lead to 7-5 with six minutes to go and led to a tense finish for the home team, but fearsome defenders Brayden Boice and Liam Kimball turned the ConVal end into no-man’s-land, and sophomore goalkeeper Jacoby Shaw was on fire.

“[Shaw] has a bright future ahead of him,” Sweeney said. “He had a hell of a game – we needed that.”

The playoff win was welcome in the Cougar locker room; ConVal was upset at home by Kearsarge last spring, missed the playoffs the year before and lost on the road in the first round in 2023. In fact, the Cougars hadn’t won a playoff game since beating Coe-Brown-Northwood in the first round in 2022, back when ConVal was a Division II team.

The celebration didn’t last long for the Cougars, however, as the win brought them a trip to No. 2 Bow, the team that handed them a lopsided loss in the final game of the regular season. The result of Saturday’s quarterfinal wasn’t much different, as the Falcons dispatched the Cougars 14-3 to end their fine season. ConVal will graduate Sweeney, Vivilecchia, Boice, Jack Phelps, Mikey Gonzalez and Max Cail. The Cougars had an excellent season, despite playing with heavy hearts, as many players were hit hard by the death of 2024 graduate Seth Fowler, who died in a car crash in October 2025. Fowler’s No. 4 jersey was retired for the season, and ConVal played their playoff games with a “4” sticker on its helmets; in many ways, coach Taylor said, the season was dedicated to his memory.

“Seth was an amazing kid,” Taylor said. “We all loved him, and we’re trying to pay tribute to him and his family, try to honor his memory and hopefully roll that into some Ws and something that would make him proud.”