Boys lacrosse preview: Titans seeking to mix it up on offense

03/20/2015

The Eastlake Titans have won six league championship titles in the last 10 years, two consecutive. Will the Titans’ reign continue in 2015?

That’s a good guess, according to Eastlake coach Nestor Rosas.

“I think it’s going to be wide open for several teams,” the EHS coach said matter-of-factly. “It will be even across the board.”

The Titans are off to a 2-2 start to the newest spring campaign, which Rosas has announced will be his last after a 10-year run with the program, the last seven as head coach.

Eastlake faced off the season with a 13-4 loss at second-ranked Santa Fe Christian on March 6 and followed with a 12-4 loss at eighth-ranked Westview on March 13. However, the Titans are 2-0 in Metro Conference play after dispatching Mar Vista, 16-3, on Monday and adding a 13-0 non-league win against visiting Chula Vista on Wednesday.

The two wins give Rosas 90 victories as Titan head coach. He said it will be a race, however, to pick up 100 wins before the season comes to a close.

“It will be tough with our schedule,” he admitted. “We won’t play 20 games this season because of some late cancellations, so I don’t know if 100 is attainable. I’ll definitely be over 90.”

Rosas will be going after win No. 91 when Eastlake hosts longtime East County power Granite Hills Friday at 7 p.m. The Eagles are off to a 2-1 start, including wins over league rival Valhalla (20-0) and Mesa League power Otay Ranch (12-2). Granite Hills dropped a 14-7 decision to visiting Westview on Tuesday.

The Titans’ schedule remains one of the tougher among conference schools, with upcoming games on the slate against Serra, Wheat Ridge (Colo.), St. Augustine and Patrick Henry.

Eastlake faces off the first of eight games in Mesa League play April 15 at Bonita Vista. Other league opponents include Otay Ranch, Olympian and Hilltop.

It will be a building process as the team works toward league play. “We came out against Santa Fe Christian and scored a couple goals right away but then they pretty much shut us down thereafter,” Rosas said.
That obviously wasn’t the case against Mar Vista and Chula Vista.

Top returners
Jordan Vicente, last year’s Mesa League Player of the Year, has carried the bulk of the team’s offense in the early going. Vicente had three goals in the loss to Santa Fe Christian and collected three goals and one assist in the loss to Westview.

Rosas said it will be at the offensive end of the field that his team will have to discover how to prosper if it is going to find success this season.

“We are returning our entire defense and goalie but we’ll have to mix it up to get more people to attack,” the EHS coach explained. “When you lose a player like Ryan Hayes to graduation, a player who scored almost 50 goals and 100 points, it’s not that easy to find guys who can produce numbers like that. We’ve challenged the guys to make up those 100 points.”

Hayes, who is now playing collegiate lacrosse at Grand Canyon University, led the Titans in scoring last season with 48 goals and 95 points. Many of his assists went to Vicente, who racked up a team-leading 60 goals.

Eastlake is fortunate to have three of its four first team all-league selections return this season: Vicente, senior long stick middie Christian Haffner and senior defensive pole Santiago Andujo.

Vicente, who ranked second to Hayes with 83 points last season, stands six feet, three inches tall and was recently clocked at 4.46 in the 40-yard dash.

“We have some fast guys,” Rosas noted. “For a big guy to have that kind of time is amazing.”

Haffner collected 138 ground balls last season to pace the league champs, followed by Vicente with 86 ground balls.
Andujo and Haffner are both past recipients of the team’s coveted Tommy Henderson Defensive Player of the Year award.

Haffner scooped up 30 ground balls against Chula Vista.

Senior middie/attackman Chase Morris and senior defensive pole Ronnie Sallee, both second team all-league picks last season, also return to further buttress the Titans.

Sallee is a three-sport standout at EHS (football, wrestling and lacrosse). He earned honors as the Mesa League Defensive Player of the Year and all-section pick as a linebacker in football and captured individual weight class titles at both the Metro Conference and section Division I championships.

“He’s a beast,” Rosas said succinctly in regard to Sallee.

Morris had five goals in the win over Mar Vista.

Other top players this season for Eastlake include sophomore goalie Nate McPeak and junior Michaelangelo Aguirre.

Fight the future
The Titans have the luxury of drawing talent from a junior varsity team stacked with players with extensive lacrosse experience at the youth club level.

“We’ve got some young kids who have good skills and need to get them involved,” Rosas said. “In the early years, we would get kids who had zero experience in lacrosse. We had basically two weeks to flip them around and make them lacrosse players.

“This year, we have one kid who has eight years of lacrosse experience. Now the varsity team focus doesn’t have to be on fundamentals. Now we can focus on more advanced techniques because they already know how to catch and pass the ball.”

Rosas estimated about half of the 40 players on the JV team already have at least three to four years of lacrosse experience.

“That group is going to be together for three or four years — it’s going to be incredible,” Rosas predicted. “This will be the largest group of kids (at the school) who will be playing together that long.”

Few other Metro teams can boast that. Perhaps that’s what sets the Titans apart.

“We’ve strengthened the program without a doubt,” Rosas said. “We’ve gotten stronger each year. We’re scheduling tougher teams each year. The premise is that if you play tougher competition, it should raise your own caliber of play. We need that in the South Bay. In the future, we’re only going to get stronger.”

Eagles soar with 16-1 season opening win

The Olympian Eagles faced off the 2015 boys lacrosse season in grand style by defeating the visiting Santana Sultans, 16-1, in a non-league game March 6.

Midfielder Anthony Hughes led the Eagles with six goals and two assists while attackman Alex Medina had three goals and one assist and defensemen Tyler Santini contributed three goals.

J.C. Madrid started the game in the net for Olympian, with Victor Godinez playing the second half.

Olympian posted its most successful season in school history last year with a 13-7 record and first-round playoff win over El Capitan.

“I’m definitely excited about the potential this Olympian team brings into its third season of play,” Eagles coach Keith Quigley said. “We made it to the second round of the playoffs last season, so we’re definitely hoping to have another shot at playoff lacrosse again. We have a solid core of returning players and a mix of new guys who I’m looking forward to working with.”

Boys Lacrosse Scoreboard
March 6
Helix 5, Mar Vista 3
Santa Fe Christian 13, Eastlake 4
Olympian 16, Santana 1

March 9
Bonita Vista 10, Monte Vista 3

March 10
Mar Vista 9, Santana 1
Preuss UCSD 14, Hilltop 4
Granite Hills 12, Otay Ranch 2

March 11
Army-Navy Academy 15, Mar Vista 4

March 12
El Camino 11, Mar Vista 1
Chula Vista 7, Foothills Christian 6

March 13
Westview 12, Eastlake 4
Preuss UCSD 11, Southwest 1
Hilltop 9, Del Lago 1
Canyon Crest Academy 13, Otay Ranch 7

March 14
Helix 10, Bonita Vista 7
El Camino 12, Chula Vista 0

March 16
San Dieguito Academy 10, Bonita Vista 9
Eastlake 16, Mar Vista 3
Patrick Henry 15, Olympian 6
El Camino 7, Otay Ranch 3

March 17
Hilltop 13, Foothills Christian 3

March 18
Bonita Vista 5, Valhalla 4 (OT)
Eastlake 13, Chula Vista 0

March 20
Eastlake 7, Granite Hills 5
Hilltop 16, Santana 4

Girls Lacrosse Scoreboard
March 5
Bonita Vista 13, Serra 5