BY MATT STOUT

It started during one of the Bow boys lacrosse team’s earliest scrimmages, a game in which head coach Chris Gaudreau said his team worried too much about the officiating.

It continued with what Gaudreau described as a big conversation in the days that followed and was further fostered by every postponement, injury and, last weekend, well-positioned opposing goalie.

“It” – the idea that Bow can’t focus on things it can’t control – has become the Falcons’ mantra this spring.

And it has them in full command of their season thus far.

With its 8-2 drubbing of Winnacunnet on Saturday, May 5, Bow moved to 4-0 and into a three-way tie for first place in Division II entering a game at Dover on Wednesday, May 9.

While it’s still relatively early – four postponements and two cancellations have left the team with eight games still to play – each one of the Falcons’ victories has been convincing, perhaps none more than their 11-2 win over contender Oyster River to start the month.

And they’ve done it in several ways, including a balanced offensive attack that featured four multi-goal scorers in Alex Stephens, Drew Kirwin, Nick Laboe and Tucker Corson against Winnacunnet. The defense, Gaudreau’s only question mark entering the season, has been just as good, he said, while goalie Pat Acone turned in a 14-save gem against Oyster River, a game the coach deemed the senior’s finest performance of his career.

Yet, behind it all has been Gaudreau’s constant assertion to his players to forget the uncontrollable.

That above everything has helped the Falcons stay focused, Gaudreau said, as they worked through constant rainouts and the loss of teammate Evan Pratt for perhaps the entire season after the defenseman was injured in a car accident in late April.

“Oh, he loves (talking about) the things we can’t control,” Acone said with a laugh of Gaudreau. “We try not to let any of that stuff get in our heads when we’re playing.”

It’s working, especially during some unexpected – and frightening – setbacks. Pratt, Gaudreau said, sustained a number of injuries in the accident that occurred during the school’s April vacation, including one that has “his back a little messed up.” He is set to return to school this week.

There’s a chance he returns by season’s end, Gaudreau said. In the meantime, Bow players are honoring Pratt with yellow stickers on their helmets that feature his number, “22,” and Nick Sarette has done a solid job stepping into the starting role.

He’s worked well with starters Greg Rolph and all-state senior Jeff Mcloud, who, together with Acone, have helped limit Bow’s opponents to a combined 11 goals entering the Dover game.

“That’s the most important thing to me,” Gaudreau said of the defense. “Early on, I wasn’t sure how good we were going to be defensively. I don’t really worry about us scoring goals. We’re going to score goals. But (defense) was the one place where we had some turnover ... and they’ve done a fantastic job.”

Bow continues to shake some of the rust, which accumulated early in the season when the team held roughly two dozen practices on pavement. But it hasn’t slowed them, especially early in Saturday’s win.

Already up 3-0 eight minutes into the game, the Falcons called a play isolating Kirwin, who shook his defender behind the net, ran to the left post and hit a cutting Corson for an easy score on the opposite side of the crease.

A moment later, a Winnacunnet player turned to no teammate in particular and asked, “What just happened?”

The answer, of course, was this: Bow is in control.