Daily Journal Girls’ Lacrosse Player of the Year: Woodside’s Annyella Mills

“It was eighth-grade PE and we played it (lacrosse) one day. It wasn’t real lacrosse, but I thought, ‘This is fun,’” Mills said. “I said when I get to high school, I would try this. It ended up being such a great time.”

Mills had never played lacrosse until she got to high school. Now four years later, she leaves as one of the best players in program history. Turned into a goalie that first year, Mills’ learning curve accelerated. By the time she graduated this past spring, she had won three straight Goalie of the Year honors in the West Bay Athletic League’s Skyline Division. She was part of four division-winning teams and she capped her high school career by helping lead the Wildcats to their first-ever Central Coast Section Division II championship.

All of which leads her to being named the San Mateo Daily Journal Girls’ Lacrosse Player of the Year.

“She was definitely our best player,” Woodside head coach Stacey Myers said. “She came to us as a freshman and had never played before. … She picked it up instantly.”

Myers said she did not have a goalie in place for that 2021 season and no one seemed keen on trying out for the position.

Except for Mills.

“She was always in this defensive stance,” Myers said. “It was just her overall posture. How she held her stick. We’re teaching all these fundamentals and she just … kept going back to this one (defensive) position.”

Mills enjoyed the experience so much that she joined the Nor Cal Rize club program and continued to hone her craft, which she brought to Woodside those three remaining years.

This year, however, may have been her best effort. She finished the year with a save percentage of 54% — Myers said anything over 50% is considered good. In WBAL Skyline Division play, she had a goal against average of 8.9. The second-best was over 10.

In the CCS playoffs, Mills increased her save percentage to 61% and allowed just over five goals per match.

But Mills proved to be more than just a ball stopper. She became one of the Wildcats’ best overall defenders. She led the team with 33 turnovers caused and won 24 ground balls.

“She was very aggressive coming out of the crease, which is like having an extra defender and a huge advantage,” Myers said. “She is just very active. … She’ll try to intercept passes, which is a much more advanced skill. It was like she was born to be a goalie.”

Despite all that, Mills felt like she got off to a slow start this season.

“The beginning of the year, I was feeling very rusty,” Mills said. “But as the season progressed, I was trying to get back into the mindset of, ‘You know the game. You know what to do. Just get out of your head.’”

Some of that rust may have actually been pressure. Woodside graduated arguably the best public school player to come out of the Peninsula in Madi Escobar, a 2023 All-American and the 2023 Daily Journal Girls’ Lacrosse Player of the Year.

And like Brad Pitt did in the movie “Moneyball,” Myers and the Wildcats tried to recreate Escobar in the aggregate, with Farrah Caldwell, Sophiya Karer and Nikki Trikas stepping up to fill the scoring void.

But no one could replace Escobar, so that meant everyone had to step up. It also meant that the defense and Mills would have to be better.

“A lot of teams have a goal scorer … but a lot of teams struggle in goal,” Myers said. “Annyella was going to be our game changer. We have Annyella in goal and she’s going to be able to stop at least 50% of these shots.”

Added Mills: “Yeah, losing Madi was scary. Everyone felt that pressure. Everyone was like, ‘We need to be 50% better.’ We’re not going to be scoring as much, so I’ll need to come up with more saves.”

In addition to her physical tools, Mills’ mental game is just as good — which is critical for a goalie, in any sport. The ability to move on from giving up a goal is the biggest asset a goalie can have.

“I do find I have a pretty good mindset being a goalie. I find it to be a very mentally challenging position,” Mills said. “It did come kind of naturally to me. I’ve always been a very positive person, to find the best in things and to just keep learning and keep growing, always.”

Mills made her presence felt in the Skyline Division opener, a 10-9, double-overtime win over rival Sequoia, finishing with 24 saves. That set the tone for a league campaign that saw the Wildcats go 9-1, with their only loss coming to Burlingame, 13-12, in the regular-season finale.

But that didn’t take the luster off a great season and with the advent of the CCS Division II bracket for the first time this year, the Wildcats felt they actually had a chance to win a section championship.

In her previous two seasons, Mills and the Wildcats qualified for playoffs, only to be one-and-done in a bracket dominated by elite private schools.

This year, the Wildcats, who finished the regular season with a 12-3 record, were excited to be playing teams on their level.

“I think the whole team was super duper excited to have this opportunity we’d never had before,” Mills said. “I think we were pretty confident going into it. We knew we could beat those teams.”

Woodside opened CCS by dominating Live Oak, 16-6, setting up a rematch with Burlingame in the semifinals. The Wildcats had beaten the Panthers in their first meeting, before the Panthers pulled out the win on their Senior Day.

Woodside and Mills dominated. The Wildcats scored eight times, while Mills allowed a season-low three goals in an 8-3 win to move into the championship match.

There, the Wildcats faced rival Sequoia for the third time this season. Woodside swept the regular-season series from the Ravens, winning two games by a combined three goals. But this time around, the Wildcats dominated their rival, winning 12-6 to become the first public school girls’ team to win a CCS lacrosse crown.

Now, after taking up the sport almost on a whim, Mills is now seriously thinking about playing in college. She is heading to UC Davis in the fall and is contemplating either trying to walk-on to the NCAA team, or playing for the school’s club team.

Either way, it doesn’t seem like Mills is done with lacrosse just yet.

“I started off freshman year and the coaches took a chance on me,” Mills said. “[Winning CCS] was totally awesome. It was a perfect end to a wonderful four years.”