GENEVA — When the Penn Yan Academy Mustangs and Geneva Panthers battle each other on the boys lacrosse field, it is always a fun matchup to watch.
It was a wet, chilly Saturday afternoon for their latest meeting and the Mustangs jumped out to an early lead, thanks to a goal scored by Penn Yan senior midfielder Braden Fingar at 11 seconds into the contest.
That fast start helped with the Mustangs claiming a 17-6 victory over the Panthers.
“I’m very pleased, anytime you play Geneva, we know they are going to come ready to play,” Penn Yan Academy head coach Brian Hobart said about the win. “We were able to jump on them quick today. We’ve been starting kind of slow (in recent games). We really emphasized attacking right from the first whistle and we did a really good job at that today.”
Fingar led both sides with six goals scored in the game and followed by Fingar’s opening goal, junior teammate Levi Fisher scored a goal to give Penn Yan a 2-0 lead after just 40 seconds of action.
After the Mustangs’ lead stretched to 5-0, Geneva senior attacker Ben Budgar finally got the Panthers on the scoreboard with a goal at 6:17 left remaining during the opening quarter.
Penn Yan answered back and stretched their lead to 11-2 by the halftime break.
“We’re a young and we’ve had a great start to the season but we know we’re a young team that has a lot of things to clean up,” Geneva head coach Jeff Dunham said about the game. “We came into this game with an opportunity to get better. We definitely know now that we have to clean up some things to get better.”
It was the first loss of the season for Geneva (7-1) by the end of the contest.
“The kids feel comfortable with themselves as far as what they can do on a lacrosse field,” Dunham said about his team. “When you run into a team like Penn Yan, that obviously changes things sometimes but the kids have been excellent and they work their tails off in practice. We stress on doing the little things right all the time, that makes a big difference. The younger guys have really picked up on that.”
Senior attacker Ryland Dunham led the Panthers with three goals scored in the loss.
Geneva will look to bounce back from their first loss of the year during their next game, which will take place on Tuesday when they welcome Wayne Central at 7 p.m.
For Penn Yan (6-3), they have now put together wins in each of their past three games during their very challenging 2026 regular season schedule.
“We’ve had some ups and downs,” Hobart said about his 2026 season so far. “We’ve played some very good competition and we’re getting better. These kids work hard every day.”
Next up for the Mustangs is Canandaigua Academy, who they will travel to play on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.
“That’s always a big one for us,” Hobart said about facing Canandaigua. “We’re really excited. We’ll enjoy this one for a little while, turn our attention to Canandaigua and go from there.”
Tukker Fisher, Miles Ditzell, Greyson Hathway and Logan Sprague each added two goals scored in the game for Penn Yan while sophomore teammate Wilson Oliva saved eight shots in 36 minutes as the Mustangs goalie during the win.