One roster says Franklin. Another says Frank.

His teammates and coaches call him Frankie.

The Totino-Grace sophomore in question, Frankie Nesser, says he prefers that last version of his first name.

But, really, it doesn’t matter.

How can it? As long as the Eagles are winning (which they are) and Nesser is scoring (which he is), then there can be no worries.

So it was that Nesser had a permanent piano-key grin on his face and half dozen chocolate chip cookies in his right hand as he conducted a postgame interview following Totino-Grace’s machine-like 12-2 dismantling of Stillwater in a Section 4 semifinal on Tuesday, June 1, at Mounds View High School.

 “Coach (Justin Hoban) has always been telling us in practice how our attack has got to step up,” Nesser said. “Usually or offense is middie based. In what, the last four or five games, our attackmen have had pretty much all the points.”

After closing the regular season with a cumulative score of 43-9 in three straight blowout wins, No. 9-ranked Totino-Grace (13-3) has merely extended the domination into the playoffs. The Eagles have defeated their first three Section 4 opponents (Forest Lake, White Bear Lake and Stillwater) by a combined score of 38-8.

Beating the Ponies wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Stillwater had the higher state ranking (No. 6), higher sectional seed (No. 2 to Totino-Grace’s No. 3) and better overall record (the Ponies entered Tuesday’s game with a 12-1 mark).

At the very least, the Ponies figured to have a significant edge in quality of attackmen, as they boasted one of the state’s highest scoring duos in the regular season in Samuel Mathieu (67 points) and Alex Flock (58).

“Their strength lined up with our strength,” Stillwater coach Travis Sanders said about Mathieu and Flock matching up against Totino-Grace’s standout defensive duo of Joe Hockert and Kyle Mork. “And they beat the snot out of us.”

Indeed, Hockert and Mork were so effective in shutting down the Ponies’ stars that Mathieu and Flock rarely were allowed to come near the goal, much less put a shot on it.

“I was a little bit nervous,” Hockert said about the matchup with the Ponies’ star attackmen. “We heard a lot about them. They put up big numbers. We knew they could play.”
 
At the other end of the field, it was relative no-namers such as Nesser, Jason Peltier (two goals, one assist), Nick Colpitts (one goal, two assists) and Chad Ledy (two goals, two assists) passing the ball around in precision fashion as the Eagles surgically carved up the Ponies’ defense.

“We had a lot of attackmen step up for us tonight,” Hoban said. “We are a midfield based team, but tonight our attackmen were fantastic.”

Leading the way was Nesser, who had three hat tricks and 19 goals in all during the regular season. He opened the scoring with 8 minutes, 11 seconds left in the first quarter and added back-to-back goals spanning the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth.

“It was huge for the younger kids to step up tonight,” Hockert said. “Peltier played the game of his life, and Frankie did also. They went to the net hard, they dodged hard all night.

“No fear.

“It was good to see.”

1. Frankie Nesser, Totino-Grace
On a team dominated by seniors, it was Nesser, a sophomore (pictured below), who led all Eagles goal scorers with a hat trick. It was Nesser's fourth three-goal game of the season.

2. Kyle Mork, Totino-Grace
Senior Mr. Lacrosse finalist was an absolute monster on defense, where he made life miserable for Stillwater's high-scoring tandem of Samuel Mathieu and Alex Flock. At one point Mork knocked the stick out of Mathieu's hands in a one-on-one battle behind the net that was typicial of how the night went for the Ponies.

3. Chad Ledy, Totino-Grace
The Eagles' senior attackman scored two goals and helped set up two more with some crisp passes as Totino-Grace at times moved the ball around in Harlem Globetrotters-type fashion.