Isabelle Chiu
Online Sports Editor
With the Bay League season coming to close and California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoffs soon approaching, Costa’s boys lacrosse team triumphed over Redondo in its penultimate game before CIF playoffs.
The Mustangs defeated Redondo 11-4 on Tuesday in an away Bay League game. The team gained a huge lead in the first quarter but slowed down for the rest of the game. The Mustangs could have played better, despite the win, coach Aaron Karsh said.
“We played okay, and there’s always room for improvement,” Karsh said. “I think we came in expecting the win and instead of taking every play for what it was, we relaxed a bit after we were up, and hopefully we understand that we can’t do that, especially since playoffs are coming up.”
The team started out strong with two goals each from senior Chad Coons and senior Zane Crandall and one goal each from freshman Hunter Ballard, sophomore Miles Choromanski. The Mustangs ended the first quarter 6-1, to start the game with a big lead.
“I think we played the best towards the end of first quarter because we started figuring out that we should be trying a little harder,” Ballard said.
Costa started to slow down in the second quarter, which opened up with a goal from Redondo. A few minutes later, Ballard scored another goal for the Mustangs. Redondo immediately responded back with a goal 10 seconds later. According to Karsh, the team had good hustle, but didn’t always manage to successfully execute their plays.
“We need do a better job of executing all of our plays,” Karsh said. “We do a good job of running them when we’re just ad-libbing, and we want to be able to make sure we go to the right spots at the right time every time.”
In the beginning of the second half, the starters came out and the secondaries came in. Both teams went back and forth but never managed to finish their plays. Halfway through the third quarter, Crandall scored off a pass from senior Tyler Maruyama and junior Casey Bonner scored, ending the third quarter 9-3.
“We’re comfortable when we’re up by a couple goals, and we’re trying to get all of our guys to have a killer instinct that some of the upperclassmen have,” Karsh said. “Hopefully we will have a better time next game.”
The fourth quarter began with a goal from Redondo. The Mustangs struggled to convert their plays into goals until the last couple minutes of the game, when senior Nash Hale scored twice to end the game 11-4.
“The underclassmen are far better than what they showed out on the field in the fourth quarter,” Bonner. “We didn’t value the ball and we didn’t have that sense of urgency to make things happen.”
Boys lacrosse, now 12-5 overall and 3-2 in Bay League, will play its next game away against Palos Verdes at 4 p.m. In Costa’s last game against them, they lost to PV 16-3. Winning the PV game puts Costa in contention to share the title of Bay League runner ups.
“We’re trying to sharpen our skills and trying to get everything perfect the best we can,” Karsh said. “I expect a group of guys that are fired up ready to play, and I’m expecting our guys to go out and compete for four quarters and see what happens.”
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