The Lakeland Varsity Eagles gutted out their second win of the young season against a scrappy Troy United squad in a wintry Friday night match up, taking a 4-1 victory

Freshman Paul Baker stood out in net for the Eagles turning back 25 of 26 shots securing an impressive first varsity win. Both teams played tight D in the first two periods with Lakeland finally breaking through early in the 3rd with Luke Weinberger .contvinuing his torrid scoring streak thanks to a silky smooth 2 on 1 assist from Junior Fisher Christian.

Christian notched a second assist along with Kyle Baker in a set up to Junior Kyle Sierota for an Eagles' power play goal to make it 2-0. Senior captains Matthew Zaremba and Nick Hrobsky combined for an insurance goal when Hrobsky broke through the Troy D and blasted a wrist shot by the Troy goaltender with 3:45 to go.

Troy United had no quit in them and finally broke Baker's shut out with 1:39 remaining. After the game Baker said with a smile "I had just thought about a shut-out and then they scored. I has not happy with that." But the Coaches were very impressed with young Baker's work. Coach Tim Ronayne said this of the freshman "Shots were even for both teams and Paul was a big reason we walked away with a win. On a night when we had a shorter bench than we'd like we needed solid goaltending and Bakes gave us just that."

Coach Ronayne said of the team overall: "After the game I told the players how proud the coaches were of the win. Troy just kept coming at as and our legs were getting heavy in the third. But we didn't take our foot off the gas and it paid off. We've got players logging important minutes for us who have not shown up on a scoresheet yet. Spencer Pickett, Caden Pierson and big Cael Slating on D come to mind. We needed the whole team to get by Troy."

Next up for the Eagles are in house league rival WLCWU in a nightcap game on Saturday at the LIA.