Finishing off their regular DFAL season, boys’ lacrosse lost to Acalanes 13-5 in a home matchup on May 8.
The home team was short two of its regular players. Sophomore Will Rack was sick and did not compete. Sophomore Ryan McCormick, who suffered a head injury in practice on May 7, was hit again in the head with an opponent’s stick in the 2nd quarter of the game. He was diagnosed with a concussion by athletic trainer Ray Albiento and benched in the 2nd half.
Junior co-captain Andrew Brown said the missing players were “not an excuse, but we just didn’t play the game we wanted to today.”
The margin of defeat was a disappointment to the Cougars, who had come with a single goal of the Dons in their first meeting of the season.
Although the 1st half was close, Acalanes pulled away in the second half by controlling the ground balls.
“It definitely doesn’t feel good after a loss, any time you take one, but I thought our boys fought hard, and [Acalanes is] a team we can definitely beat,” said head coach Mitchel Frey. “It just comes down to execution and limiting the amount of mistakes we make and I think you saw them control the ground-ball matchup in the second half. That kind of turned the game there.”
Acalanes head coach Brent Ringwood attributed winning the ground balls to “sheer will.” He said, “The offense worked really well, the defense executed the game plan, and we won the ground ball battle.”
“I thought in the first half our team did a really great job defensively, really communicating on the defensive end, and really scrapping for every ground ball. I think if you look at the ground-ball matchup in the first half, we really controlled it,” Frey said. “The second half, they won the ground-ball matchup and I think that’s where the game really turned. They played a mistake-free second half. We had a lot of mistakes on the offense end, because we were trying to force things. But when you don’t have the ball a lot in the offense end that’s going to happen.”
With the win, Acalanes remained undefeated in league play and clinched the DFAL title. Campolindo finished in 2nd place. Both teams will advance to the North Coast Section (NCS) tournament, and expect to play against each other again in the playoffs.
“It’s always disappointing when we play a rival like that,” said junior co-captain Kevin Hoffinger. “It just hurts, because we’re a great team and we’ve faced a lot of adversity in the past. And we’re just powering through it. Our team’s done things we never thought we could do, and this is just another bump in the road. We can continue through NCS, beat them, beat those couple teams. We’ll make sure it counts that time.”
Frey said he was “just proud of the way our boys fought, and looking forward to making a run in NCS.”
