Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Todd Miller (10) celebrates with teammate Joey Sfarra following Cardinal Mooney’s 4-1 road win over Canfield Wednesday evening.

CANFIELD — It wasn’t glamorous, in fact many people in the stands would say it felt more like a November evening rather than a late-April night, but it physically matched what you’d see on the gridiron.

For the first time in program history, the Cardinal Mooney and Canfield boys lacrosse teams met. Goals weren’t exactly easy to come by on a below freezing night, but a solid defensive effort and balanced scoring led Cardinal Mooney to a 4-1 road victory in the “Battle of the Cardinals”.

In many regards, Mooney coach Chris Joss couldn’t have been happier with the effort his team showed Wednesday night versus a tough Canfield opponent.

“Like I told them before the game, we worked on it yesterday, we have to play good defense, we have to cut down on the turnovers, had a rough one the other night, but my defense played fantastic,” Joss said. “They closed it out. They played all four quarters. You can’t turn the ball over all night and they did a pretty good job of keeping the ball tonight, so I’m proud of them.

“There’s just not that many teams here, so it’s not a cheap sport, it’s not cheap traveling especially now. So, it’s nice to keep it in town, short distance, and the games are more fun. When we’re playing the local guys it’s more fun, there’s a lot more skin in this game.”

Moments following the first draw, Mooney’s Joey Sfarra drove and scored to take an early 1-0 lead, with junior Will Varley adding a second score to make it 2-0 midway through the second quarter.

“It was a wave of emotions, good ones,” Varley said after taking down Canfield. “I don’t feel like we played to the best of our ability, but we did what we had to, and finished the game strong.

Canfield (5-5) replied eight seconds later with a score by Nicolo Cocca, but that would be the first and only time the home Cardinals would find the back of the net, as Cardinal Mooney sophomore goalkeeper TJ Richey held back a Canfield attack of 14 shots on goal.

With 11 minutes left in the contest, junior Todd Miller drove toward the goal and bounced one in through the left side of the net to go up 3-1.

Sophomore Dom Graziano added the final score with 4:35 remaining.

“It’s the best when we beat a local team, and we just played to the best of our ability to get the win,” Graziano said. “Our defense was great tonight, they played unstoppable. We just knew we had to keep our composure and keep on playing how we were playing to just hold them off.

“We have Will, he’s a very big part of our offense, and then all our other guys we chip in too to help out. I think I did pretty good, I feel like I could have gotten a lot more ground balls, could’ve made better passes, but overall we did end up with the win, so it’s pretty good.”

It’s the type of contest that could give a program some momentum with the May 8th tournament draw on the horizon, Varley is ready for what’s in store.

“I feel like we held them, (Richey) did pretty good, got to get those ground balls and clean it up for the next game,” Varley said. “It gives us a lot more opportunity to score, a lot more chances and that’s needed in lacrosse big time.”