By Hannah Proctor
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa boys lacrosse team suffered a loss to Palos Verdes on Thursday, April 19 in a game that decided the seed in which each team would be placed for playoffs. Despite its 22-5 loss, Costa maintains a winning Bay League record of 5-2 and an overall record of 6-6.
Palos Verdes took a commanding lead immediately in the game, ending the first quarter with a score of 6-2. The Mustangs knew coming into the game that Palos Verdes, ranked 3rd in the South Bay, would be a difficult team to beat.
“I expected a really good PV team coming into the game,” head coach Chris Jewett said. “We played them tough, but they’re very strong and very athletic.”
The second quarter led to an even larger lead for Palos Verdes by ending with a score of 12-3. Costa retained its strategy of attempting to win face-offs throughout the game and continued to fight toward PV’s goal.
“We knew we needed to win ground balls,” Jewett said. “We needed to take good shots on offense and we needed to possess the ball on offense and contain their best player. We didn’t win ground balls, though. When you don’t win those, you can’t win.”
The third and fourth quarters continued with the same pattern of Palos Verdes gaining an even steeper lead over the Mustangs.
“We really tried to ignore it when we were on the field,” junior Marcus Francis said. “We don’t let that kind of thing get to us, but it was annoying to have them yell at us when they were winning.”
Senior Chris O’Brien led Costa with three goals, followed by senior Dakota Randall and junior Alec Hoag who each had one. Senior Wes Sumen and junior Jeremy Silva both played well on defense for the Mustangs. Despite the team’s best efforts at defense, though, Palos Verdes consistently got to the goal.
“I expected a little more from the team going into the game,” senior Ryan Silver said. “But we did pretty well, our defense could have done a little more, but our offense held up against them.”
Leave a Reply