April 22, 2000
NOTRE DAME, Ind. — The 12th-ranked Notre Dame men’s lacrosse won its home finale for the 2000 season and recorded its fifth straight win with a convincing 20-12 victory over visiting Fairfield in the first-ever meeting between the two schools.
Notre Dame, which boasts its longest winning streak since the 1997 campaign and improves to 8-3 on the season, closes out the regular-season campaign next Sunday, April 30 when the Irish travel to Cambridge, Mass., to take on Harvard. The 20 goals scored by head coach Kevin Corrigan’s team are the most by an Irish squad since a 20-7 road win at Ohio State on May 3, 1997, and the most in a home game since a 22-11 victory over Butler on March 29, 1993.
Tom Glatzel (Ellicott City, Md.) led the Irish in scoring with five goals as a season-high 10 different players contributed in the scoring column. Glatzel was among five multiple-goal scorers as he tallied five of Notre Dame’s first nine goals. David Ulrich (Baltimore, Md.) finished the contest with four goals and three assists, while Steve Bishko (West Islip, N.Y.), Stedman Oakey (Charlottesville, Va.) and Jon Harvey (Winchester, Mass.) added two goals each.
Fairfield, which drops its sixth straight to fall to 2-8 on the season, was led by Rob Scipioni’s two goals and three assists.
The Stags gave the Irish trouble early on as the two teams traded goals with the first quarter ending in a 3-3 tie following Glatzel’s first goal of the game. Glatzel pushed the lead to 6-3 and Oakey gave the Irish a 6-3 advantage with 12:53 remaining in the second quarter.
Peter Shanley stopped the string of four consecutive Irish goals, but back-to-back goals by Glatzel and Harvey gave Notre Dam an 8-4 lead with 9:52 left in the quarter. The Stags scored two consecutive goals on scores by Mark Beckwith and Shawn Graham that pulled the visitors to within 8-6 with 5:41 remaining before intermission. The two-goal differential right before the half would be as close as Fairfield would get the Irish the rest of the afternoon.
Notre Dame carried a 10-6 lead into halftime after goals by Glatzel and Ulrich.
The Irish scored the first four goals of the second half on scores by Chris Young (Camillus, N.Y.), Ulrich, John Flandina (West Islip, N.Y.) and Oakey.
After consecutive goals by Marc Torrey and Spencer Steele, Irish goalkeeper Kirk Howell (Nashville, Tenn.) made history by becoming the first Notre Dame goalie to score a goal. Howell’s first collegiate score came via a shot from the restraining line. After an Irish player cleared the ball to Howell, he moved up to the restraining line to try to clear the ball to a teammate. When Fairfield goalie C.J. Kemp came out of the goal to pick up one of Notre Dame’s attack players to prevent the clear, Howell was quick to pick up that Kemp had moved out of the goal area. Instead of throwing it to another player, Howell shot it from the restraining line and it landing into the net. The goal capped off a five-goal quarter for the Irish who owned a commanding 15-8 lead after 45 minutes.
Notre Dame scored five times in the fourth quarter, while Fairfield added for scores of its own for the final 20-12 outcome. Senior Keith Parendo (Mineola, N.Y.) tallied his second career goal of the quarter, while freshman Joe Nejman (Meadowbrook, Pa.) netted his first collegiate score as the Irish had five different goal scorers in the final 15-minute stanza.