By Jen Watson The Creekside Knights visited Nease’s stadium on Friday night and had two great lacrosse games. During this past summer, the Nease Panthers, Fleming Island Eagles, and Creekside Knights top athletes joined forces to form two summer travel teams and traveled together to various tournaments. This mix of elite athletes proved to work well together as they were wildly successful in local tournaments as well as in Maryland where these Florida kids dominated teams from New Jersey and Texas. However, this past Friday night the summer pals had to be district rivals. Nease and Creekside showed each other nothing but respect for each other and were gentleman. First was the JV game which was incredibly exciting. With a score of 5-2 at the half in favor of the Panthers, it seemed like the Knights were going to walk away with a loss. However, in the third quarter, the Knights battled back scoring four goals to Nease’s one goal making the score 6-6. Both teams battled back and forth evening up the score 7-7 with 53 seconds left in the game. Both teams took timeouts and an untimely penalty by the Panthers resulted in a 8-7 final of the JV game. Varsity then took the field. The first face-off was technically won by Creekside and the first shot fired on goal was by the Knights with no success. Creekside turned the ball over and Nease’s Joey O’livera scored in the first two minutes of the first quarter. However, shortly thereafter Gabe Noto, Timmy Vanderlinde, and Julian Bonilla put up scores making it 4-1. However, Joey O’livera answered this just before end of the first quarter making it 4-2. In the second quarter, Nease kept the hammer down with Ashton Wood dominating face-offs. The Panther’s scored two more but so did Creekside making it 6-4 at the half. After the half, Nease came out swinging scoring one more goal narrowing the game to 6-5. However, the Knight’s Hugh Mason answered back with his swift running and quick shot making it 7-5 with 8:27 left in the 3rd quarter. In the 4th quarter, Nease answered again with another score, but Nease had two men down on penalties which allowed Julian Bonilla, First Coast News Athlete of the Week, to score making it 8-6. Brandon Edwards landed his first goal of the night making it 9-6 and then another goal by Bonilla making it Knights 10-6 with 6:13 left on the clock. However, the Panthers did not give up and scored two more goals with 1:18 and 28 seconds on the clock respectively. The final score of the game was 10-8 and special recognition to Conor Ryan, the Knights goalie, who saved many shots throughout the entire game. While the Nease Panthers and Creekside Knights fist bumped each other in a respectful fashion, they know all too well that they will probably meet up again at District playoffs and as friends, they know what each other is up against. The Knights bussed to Tallahassee the next morning to take on Maclay and came up short with a 10-7 defeat.