CdM suffers first loss

Forty-eight minutes wasn’t enough time to produce a winner between two of the top high school boys’ lacrosse teams in the state.

Overtime decided the outcome between host Corona del Mar, ranked No. 4 by laxpower.com, and No. 3 San Diego Torrey Pines on Saturday afternoon.

In overtime, Torrey Pines played keep away. Winning the faceoff proved huge for the Falcons.

Spencer Grant, a sophomore committed to Michigan, prevailed for the seventh time in 19 tries against Brown-bound senior Jason Simaan. Torrey Pines held possession for more than half of the four minutes in extra time, and then someone named Spencer Small came up big.

After Torrey Pines misfired on three straight shots during a 33-second span, Small recorded the game-winning goal at the 1:49 mark. He bounced in a shot from the right side to lift Torrey Pines to a 9-8 win.

The Falcons (7-1) somehow pulled off the back-and-forth battle, despite never earning a man-up advantage and watching CdM go two for six on the man-up situation.

“Welcome to the OC,” Torrey Pines Coach Jono Zissi said with a smile.

Zissi could smile afterward. His program is the first to knock off CdM this season.

A year ago, it took 19 games for someone to down CdM, which saw its season end in the semifinals of the U.S. Lacrosse Southern Section South Division playoffs. There are plenty of games left for the Sea Kings (7-1) this year.

“This is just another game in the season,” CdM Coach G.W. Mix said. “What we talked about [afterward] is if any of us expected to go undefeated throughout an entire lacrosse season, with the [tough] schedule we have, that’s disrespectful to the people we play against. We just wanted to make sure to learn from [this loss], get better from it, and clean up some of the mistakes we made down the stretch there that cost us some possessions at critical times. We get that cleaned up, we’ll be pretty good, because if we can go toe-to-toe with a team like [Torrey Pines], we’re in pretty good shape.”

The Sea Kings appeared in good shape when Eric Fries scored to give CdM an 8-7 lead with 3:41 left in regulation. Torrey Pines’ final game of the week looked as though it would end like the first one, a loss.

Only Regis Jesuit, from Aurora, Colo., had beaten Torrey Pines this year. Fries tried to take down Torrey Pines by himself in the second half and it almost worked.

The sophomore attacker recorded CdM’s last three goals. The first goal evened things up at 6-6 with 26 seconds left in the third, and then in the fourth, he put the Sea Kings up, 7-6, at the 10:15 mark, and 8-7 almost 6½ minutes later.

With Simaan winning five of the first six faceoffs in the second half, things looked as if CdM would hold on for its second one-goal win in five days. The Sea Kings edged St. Margaret’s, 8-7, at home.

But Grant won the ensuing faceoff for Torrey Pines, and with 1:51 left, Ara Suhadolnik’s shot hit the post. The Sea Kings called a timeout to go over things.

The Falcons still managed to tie it at 8-8. Marc Lefferdink found the back of the net with 73 seconds remaining, and just like that, Torrey Pines became the first team to force overtime against CdM in six years.

The score was even for the seventh time. The two goalies, CdM’s Nick Guizan and Torrey Pines’ Max McGuire, a junior committed to Fairfield University in Connecticut, kept their teams in it, both turned in strong performances. Guizan finished with nine saves and McGuire had 10.

McGuire, who gave up two goals to Jordan Greenhall and one each to Sachin Gokhale, Will Favreau and Ryan Meckler, didn’t have to stop any shots in overtime. The Sea Kings never gained possession.

“Corona del Mar really crushed us last year,” said Zissi, referring to the 13-4 loss suffered at Torrey Pines. “It was our worst loss [since 2009, when Carlsbad La Costa Canyon beat us, 14-4], so that was still stinging. We’ve had a rough week. We lost a pretty bad game Wednesday, so it was a gut check for our guys.

“[Small] stepped up and took a big shot. He’d been struggling all day, too.”

Small’s second goal, tying him with Alex Pistorius and Georgetown sophomore commit Zach Friedland for the team lead, gave Torrey Pines momentum going into spring break next week. The Falcons travel to play two top programs from Colorado, at Greenwood Village Cherry Creek, ranked No. 1 by laxpower.com, on Thursday, and at No. 13 Englewood Kent Denver on Saturday.

The Sea Kings are heading to the desert for spring break, starting Monday morning. Mix said the team plans to visit Joshua Tree National Park on the way to Phoenix, Ariz.

“We’ve never gone to Arizona [during spring break],” said Mix, whose program is playing at Phoenix Desert Vista on Tuesday, Scottsdale Notre Dame Prep on Wednesday, and Phoenix Brophy College Prep on Thursday. “Every year I’ve been here [at CdM] we’ve gone to San Francisco. I just felt like I wasn’t sure I could take another year of sitting at Fisherman’s Wharf and waiting for all 35 [of my players] to come back. We wanted to do something different.”