“We work to try to end the season in a pile,” Rams coach Nick Worek said.
As its players showed by putting up five fingers on one hand and one on the other, Riverside is the first school in Virginia High School League history to win five straight titles and is now tied with Robinson with six official championships.
“It hurts at first, definitely. You’re getting crushed by guys in the pile,” said senior Drew Mazzocco. “But it’s just the best feeling in the world. There’s no words to describe it.”
Worek sensed his team’s focus during breakfast and in pregame meetings. At the team’s hotel, the group discussed the importance of starting fast.
“We’ve been there before and we knew what it takes to start a state title game,” the coach said. “And that’s exactly what we did.”
Senior Danny Rice, sophomore Jacob Stromberg and Mazzocco — a trio that combined for 16 goals on the day — scored the first three tallies. Riverside took an early 5-0 lead, led by nine at halftime and never broke stride en route to the state crown.
But this title wasn’t always an inevitability. The team’s perennial success generates relentless title-or-bust expectations. The Rams (18-2) are also perpetually under a microscope.
“Everyone in the building is looking up at us,” Rice said.
Those two coalescing forces create immense pressure. Riverside felt that duress in early April after a loss to Freedom (South Riding) that dropped the team to 3-2. The next day, Worek gathered his team before practice.
“We all thought we were going to get ripped,” Rice said.
Instead, Worek just reminded his team about their three core values: accountability, integrity and toughness. He told them to move on and prepare for their next game — the Rams had to go to Charlottesville to take on private school St. Anne’s-Belfield in eight days.
A one-goal Riverside victory over the Saints kicked off a 15-game win streak that carried the Rams through Saturday.
“The seniors took over and decided that the outcome they wanted was to be down here in Richmond and finish it with another state championship ring,” Worek said.
One of those seniors was goalie Griffin Ambuhl, who made 12 saves across the first three quarters of Saturday’s win. Ambuhl, who also made 17 saves in the Rams’ 2023 win, didn’t even start high school as a lacrosse player. Instead, he hoped to make the Rams’ baseball team. Four years later, Ambuhl is glad that he did not.
“It’s crazy to think back on it now. I’m very happy I didn’t make the baseball team,” Ambuhl said. “It gave me the best four years of my life here.”