Girls’ Lacrosse: Defense helps CdM move on

In lacrosse, like many other sports, it takes a solid team defense to advance in the playoffs.

So it made sense when Corona del Mar High girls’ lacrosse Coach Aly Simons gave the game ball to the entire defense following Tuesday’s 11-8 home win over Temecula Valley in the first round of the U.S. Lacrosse Southern Section South Division playoffs.

“We have a lot of movement,” Simons said. “We have so many girls who can play ‘middie’ [midfield], so our defense is very interchangeable. Even though we have three solid defenders back there — Katherine Mulvaney, Megan Rieden and Brooke Beyrooty — everybody else can kind of play that position. It’s a nice problem to have.”

The next problem the No. 6-seeded Sea Kings have is trying to beat No. 3 Los Alamitos. They’ll face the Griffins in a South Division quarterfinal game Thursday at 6 p.m. at Los Alamitos High.

Los Al beat Mission Viejo, 17-7, in another first-round game Tuesday. The Griffins, the six-time defending South Division champions, also handed the Sea Kings an embarrassing 15-1 setback in a nonleague game in March.

“We’ve set them up to think we’re horrible, so I’m excited,” Simons said. “I think we’ll give them a good game, better than the last game.”

CdM (11-6) did play a good game against No. 11-seeded Temecula Valley (12-6). The play of that defense had a lot to do with it. Freshman goalie Ashley Olson made a season-high 14 saves. Eight of those came in the first half, which ended with Corona del Mar holding a 5-3 advantage.

Temecula Valley had tied the score at 3-3 when Karissa Glover scored with 7:54 remaining in the first half. But senior co-captain Mason Bendetti fed sophomore Kennedy Mulvaney for a goal two minutes later, then sophomore Jensen Coop scored on fellow sophomore Hailey Neumann’s assist with 33 seconds left until halftime.

“Every goal that we scored was based off our team play,” said Kennedy Mulvaney, who had a game-high four goals as well as six draw controls. “Not one goal was an individual goal. It was a whole team effort.”

Neumann, a defender, had to leave the game at halftime due to a soccer commitment. But the CdM defense stayed tough, even after Temecula Valley’s Hayley Holmquist scored early in the second half to narrow the visitors’ deficit to one goal.

CdM answered with four straight goals. First it was junior Kennedy McGuinness, then Kennedy Mulvaney scored twice before McGuinness added another goal on a free-position shot.

Defensively, CdM held Temecula Valley to just five goals before the Golden Bears scored three times in the final three minutes, as CdM was short-handed following a yellow card.

“I think we had really good communication and slides,” Beyrooty said. “We’ve been working on that a lot, so that helped a lot.”

Added Rieden: “We worked on keeping tight on your cutter. Watching film of them this week, we saw that they like to feed low and get the cut, so we tried to deny that early on in the game.”

Bendetti had three goals and an assist for CDM, while junior Paige Nelson tallied three assists. Sophomore Katie McCabe led the winners with four ground balls, and Bendetti, Coop and Rieden had three each.

Next comes the powerhouse, Los Alamitos. It’s a rematch of a playoff semifinal game from last year that the Griffins won, 16-9.

Both teams are much different than last year. But what seems to be true is that the Sea Kings, year after year, tend to be playing their best lacrosse as the playoffs arrive, which gives them hope for Thursday’s matchup.

“It’s not like we played them and we forgot about it,” Kennedy Mulvaney said. “We take that game into every single practice. We’re always like, ‘Oh, remember, that’s what Los Al did.’ We always try to improve, based on how good they were. We’re all really excited to play them.”