Bowling Green 5-foot-11, 290-pound junior goalie Hunter Kozlowicz made seven fourth quarter saves to preserve the Bobcats’ 7-6 win over Clay in both teams’ Northern Lakes League opener at Bobcat Stadium Tuesday.

Lacrosse goalies, like most other players, get to wear helmets, masks, shoulder pads, and other padding, but getting in the way of a fast-moving small, hard lacrosse ball is no easy thing.

“Sometimes it hurts, but for the most part it’s pretty fun,” Kozlowicz said. “You just get hit with the ball a lot. You just have to be able to take it.”

On Tuesday, Kozlowicz also had to deal with wind gusting over 40 miles-per-hour. While it definitely affected the players on the field, making longer passes difficult, for the goalie it’s more of a help, says Kozlowicz.

“The only thing it really affects with our goalie is that sometimes it’s hard to throw because our nets are so big, but it doesn’t really affect us goalies that much. The other thing is (sometimes) it helps us out,” said Kozlowicz.

Kozlowicz rebounded from allowing Clay to build a 5-4 halftime lead, then just over five minutes into the second half, Clay sophomore attack Ben Kraus scored on an assist from sophomore midfielder Jeremiah Santos.

The Eagles never scored again, even though they got off 16 second half shots, including 11 that were on goal. BG associate head coach Connor Rogowski said Kozlowicz stood tall.

“He made some really good saves when we needed him to,” Rogowski said. “He came out and he didn’t have the start that he necessarily wanted to in the first quarter or two, but he came out and finished very strong and made some really big saves for us down the stretch.

“We were making some mistakes and we needed someone to save us on the back end, so he did,” Rogowski continued.

Meanwhile, the Bobcats scored three goals unanswered. BG junior attack Isaac Baber sent a pass right, and senior attack Jeremiah Hanson answered the call by scoring with 1:09 remaining in the third to bring the Bobcats to within one goal.

In the fourth, BG senior attack Reece Rath got creative, sending a pass from behind the net to junior attack Elliot Baber, who tied the game at six goals apiece with 9:33 remaining.

Rath scored the game-winner 43 seconds later, coming around from behind the net, and bouncing an angled shot into the net to give the Bobcats the lead for good, 7-6, with 8:50 remaining.

With just over two minutes remaining, BG tried to maintain possession until the final horn, but turned the ball over with 48 seconds on the clock, giving Clay one last possession.

Clay junior attack Crate Newton had a wide open 30-foot shot at the net that might have beaten Kozlowicz if it were too inches to the left, but it bounced off the right post at the horn to preserve the Bobcats’ win.

Clay coach Mick First acknowledged his team had its chances, owning a 2-to-1 ratio in ground balls in the fourth quarter, and the Eagles had six fourth quarter steals while BG just had two, both by BG junior defenseman Seth Gollehon.

In addition, BG senior face-off specialist Paul Archer continued the dominance he showed in the Bobcats’ last win over Leo (Indiana), winning five of six draws in the second half. The fourth quarter was filled with turnovers by both teams, too.

“(It was) our poor passing,” First said. “It was a great game, our defense was stellar, our face-off team was a little lacking, transition was good, but we had too many turnovers.”

Rath led the Bobcats in scoring with two goals and two assists and Isaac Baber, Elliot Baber, senior attack J.T. Webb, and freshman midfielder Kayden Torres scored one goal apiece. Gollehon and Hanson had one assist each.

Newton led Clay by scoring a three-goal hat trick, Kraus scored twice, junior midfielder Jack Joldrichsen dished out two assists, and Santos, junior midfielder Bryce Cullen, and sophomore defense Collin Greenwalt had one assist each.

Clay, after opening the season with a 7-6 overtime win over Xenia, lost its second straight to fall to 1-2.

BG improves to 2-1 overall, winning its second straight, and Kozlowicz believes the Bobcats could have a great season, but they have to clean some things up.

“I think this team has potential,” Kozlowicz said. “We have to fix (things), like with our ground balls, we have to be better on those. I think if we just get those, than we can be a good team.”

However, it hasn’t been easy historically for BG to get wins in the NLL, so starting off the season with a conference victory says something.

“It’ll always feels good. Clay has been a team we’ve been competitive with,” Rogowski said. “We know what they are about, and it’s always good to get a league win, especially in a league that is pretty hard in lacrosse.

“Being a fairly new school still (lacrosse program), to get some league wins, I know last year we got a couple for the first time in our program history.

“So to start off this year is one for our team, for our program. But we have a lot of little things we need to work on to continue building for next week.”