Development continues in both girls and boys lacrosse in the South County region and it appears to be occurring rather rapidly after girls teams representing Otay Ranch and Eastlake high school received the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively, in this year’s San Diego Section Division II playoff field.
“The South Bay as a whole has been developing,” explained Eastlake coach Robert Blas, whose team defeated 10th-seeded El Camino by a 10-5 score in Tuesday’s quarterfinals. “We have eight teams in our conference now and four of them made the playoffs this year — three (Otay Ranch, Eastlake and Mar Vista) in Division II and Hilltop in Division I.”
Both Eastlake (17-2) and Otay Ranch (18-2) remained on a possible collision course after advancing to Thursday’s division semifinals.
Otay Ranch eliminated eighth-seeded Mission Bay by a score of 13-3 in a quarterfinal game played Monday due to scheduling conflicts at ORHS.
The Lady Mustangs and Lady Titans each face one last hurdle to Saturday’s division championship game at San Dieguito Academy. Otay Ranch will host fourth-seeded Grossmont (14-5) in Thursday’s semifinals while Eastlake will host sixth-seeded Patrick Henry (14-8).
The winners of Thursday’s semifinal games advance to the CIF title game.
“If we both make it to the finals, it would be a South Bay showdown,” Eastlake coach Robert Blas explained. “We’d love to play them in the finals but we have to get there first.”
Otay Ranch and Eastlake met twice in league play. Both meetings went to overtime, with the Lady Mustangs winning both to capture this year’s league championship.
Otay Ranch finished 13-1 in league play; Eastlake finished 12-2.
A potential third meeting – for even higher stakes — could be on the horizon.
Titan-ic win
Eastlake rebounded from an early deficit to take a 5-3 halftime lead on El Camino in Tuesday’s playoff game. The Lady Wildcats were no pushover after posting a 6-5 upset win over seventh-seeded Helix in last Saturday’s opening round.
Julia Masias scored twice in the first half to lead the Lady Titans, who also received goals from Jessica Wilder, Tiva Krahenbuhl and Peyton Olson.
Eastlake scored the opening two goals of the second half to build a 7-3 lead and essentially coasted home to the victory from there.
Olson and Masias scored goals 38 seconds apart to start the second half to boost the hosts to a four-goal lead.
A goal by El Camino’s Jazmine Gayton made the score 7-4 with 16:32 to play but Eastlake reeled off two more unanswered goals – one each by Krahenbuhl and Janelle Fortuno – to take a 9-4 advantage on the scoreboard.
The Lady Wildcats made the score 9-5 on a goal with 9:40 remaining in the game but the Lady Titans countered that with a goal by Sasha Thrower with 3:29 to play to produce the final score.
Karina Quezada contributed two assists to the Eastlake offense. Lily Vasquez led El Camino (7-11) with two goals.
Masias had three goals in the game for the winners.
Trick shots
Mission Bay eliminated ninth-seeded Mar Vista, 11-6, in last Saturday’s Division II opening round. The Lady Mariners finished the 2016 season with a 13-8 overall record after finishing 8-6 in Metro play.
Eighth-seeded Hilltop defeated ninth-seeded Santa Fe Christian, 12-8, in last Friday’s Division I opener but ended its season with a 16-4 setback to top-seeded Scripps Ranch in Monday’s quarterfinals.
The Lady Lancers finished 16-7 on the season, 11-3 in league play.
Grossmont edged fifth-seeded Pacific Ridge, 9-8, in overtime in Tuesday’s quarterfinals while Patrick Henry upset third-seeded Granite Hills, 9-7, to advance to Thursday’s Division II semifinals.
Boys playoffs: Big second half powers Eastlake to big win over Ravens
Four Metro teams qualified for this year’s section boys lacrosse playoffs: Eastlake in Division I and Otay Ranch, Montgomery and Bonita Vista in Division II.
Eastlake, this year’s Mesa League champion, faced off first-round play Tuesday with an 8-2 win over 11th-seeded Canyon Crest Academy. While the sixth-seeded Titans were dominant in the second half, the teams were tied 1-1 at halftime.
In fact, the teams nearly finished the first quarter scoreless in a possession-based game until Canyon Crest’s Matt Anderson scored with 0.4 second remaining in the quarter.
Asanti Baltazar scored on a whip-motion shot with 7:38 left in the second quarter to knot the game 1-1.
The Titans take a 13-5 record into Friday’s quarterfinal game at third-seeded Scripps Ranch (12-4).
Canyon Crest finished the season 8-9 overall.
“We’re happy with the No. 6 seed,” EHS head coach Kevin McPeak explained. “That’s about where we are in the division.”
The Titans started Tuesday’s playoff game like any other game: players met at the school’s memorial to late Eastlake lacrosse player Tommy Henderson, located just behind the stadium, and then made their way down to the field for warm-ups.
Henderson remains an icon in the Titan lacrosse program. Besides the shamrock-shaped memorial, the team presents its annual Tommy Henderson award to the team’s top defender. The Titans also designate the team’s first home game of the season to Henderson’s memory with the Tommy Henderson Memorial Game.
“Tommy represented so much to us that we cherish him in our program,” McPeak said.
Eastlake will return four of their top six scorers next season. Three underclassmen finished 1-2-3 in team scoring this season. The youth movement is part of a surge of players from the junior varsity ranks — and before that, from the South Bay Outlaws youth program.
Freshman Jaxen Trinidad led the Titans in season scoring this year; last year he was a member of the Outlaws. Expect more in the pipeline in the future.
“This year our JV team was fantastic,” McPeak explained. “We had a tremendous year. We tied two games and did not lose any, if I remember correctly. One of the exciting things we implemented this season is to install the same system in both the varisty and JV teams, so there is a seamless transition.”
Eastlake pulled up three JV players for Tuesday’s playoff game: Michael Carino, McKinley Egland-Young and Alfredo Garcia.
Otay Ranch, Montgomery and Bonita Vista all suffered defeat to open the Division II playoffs on Wednesday.
Ninth-seeded Montgomery earned a home playoff game over eighth-seeded San Diego due to its status as a league champion but could not take advantage of home field advantage in an 11-5 loss to the Cavers.
Host Otay Ranch, seeded seventh, dropped an 13-8 decision to 10th-seeded Point Loma while 11th-seeded Bonita Vista lost by a score of 14-1 at sixth-seeded El Camino.
