SHP swept in LAX finals

Since the inception of CCS lacrosse, SHP has appeared in the finals all four years in both the boys’ and girls’ tourneys. There’s more where that came from, as the young SHP girls’ team took the field Friday with no seniors on the active roster.

“We’re very young,” SHP girls’ head coach Wendy Kridel said. We didn’t have a senior play today. ... We’ve got a great group of players that’s here. We’ve got a great group of kids that are coming into the program. These kids are committed, they’re great sports, they’re loyal, they love each other, they love to play, they work hard, and they do whatever they’ve got to do.”

The No. 2-seed SHP girls (18-3) were without their one starting senior, attacker Tessa Espinosa, who fell ill with appendicitis earlier in the week. It was a quite a shakeup for the front tier of the Gators’ attack, one that totaled 32 points through the first two rounds of the tournament — defeating No. 7 Los Gatos 19-1 in the quarterfinal opener, and defeating rival Menlo, the No. 3 seed, 13-2 in the semifinals.

“I think losing Tessa Espinoza was a loss,” SHP sophomore Olivia Abbott said. “She’s a really big contributor on the offensive end. But I think that our team is so young, and has so much potential ... and I see we have a lot of talent, and I think the next two years are going to go great for us. And I can’t wait to see where we go.”

The postgame of the boys’ final saw a lot more goodbyes, particularly seniors Ian Dykes and Blake Hetherington, who have played lacrosse together since they were in second grade. The two four-year varsity seniors are headed to different Division I programs, with Dykes playing at Duke and Hetherington bound for Harvard.

“There’s a lot of emotions,” Dykes said. “I mean, you try to not get too tied up in them. Kind of wanted to focus on us playing. We were going to play as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and we knew this was going to be our last game and we wanted to see where the chips fall.”

SHP boys see halftime lead slip away

The No. 2-seed Gentleman Gators (17-7) played a remarkable first half, limiting St. Ignatius to just two goals and taking a 5-2 lead into the break. The second half, however, was a different story. The No. 1-seed Wildcats (21-2) responded with six answered goals in the third quarter, and finished the game on a 7-0 run while holding SHP scoreless throughout the second half.

“I think we played really well in the first half,” Dykes said. “Obviously at halftime we were really excited. But at the end of the day, we knew the job wasn’t done. … Obviously we came up a little bit short, but we were comfortable. We knew what we could do, and we executed like that’s the kind of half we could have, and that’s what we did.”

SHP opened the game winning six of the first eight faceoffs, but controls flipped to St. Ignatius in a big way.

“They were playing great,” St. Ignatius head coach Chris Packard said. “All the credit to them. They had all the momentum. We were just trying to throw a new wrinkle in there. So, we took off on the faceoff a little bit and then tried to turn it into more of a track meet than a slowed down game. Then a couple bounces in our favor, and it sort of seemed to work out.”

The Wildcats took the on a goal by Christian Lee on a long assist pass from Giacomo Chapman late in the third quarter. Lee finished with two goals, while Stu Gates led the Wildcats with a game-high four goals.

“They’re a really good passing team offensively, so we were trying to not slide as much, more than we had to, trying to make them beat us 1-on-1,” SHP head coach Chris Rotelli said. “I thought our defense did a really good job most of the game. … There were times it went great and there were times that it didn’t.”

SHP freshman Tate Starr scored a team-high two goals, while seniors Dykes, Hetherington and Nathan Jones scored one apiece.

“I told them I love them, told them I was proud of them,” Rotelli said of SHP’s emotional postgame goodbye. “They got into the arena and they gave it everything they had. We jumped out in this game, we played extremely well, executing the game plan that we talked about doing. And [St. Ignatius] is a great team and they did a great job coming back in the second half. I thought they played better offensively and defensively, and the faceoff guy played better.”

SHP girls give St. Ignatius early second chances

Having split the season series with St. Ignatius (17-5), the Lady Gators knew what they were up against. And the first quarter played out similarly to the regular season, as freshman Nora Still scored two early goals, and Abbott added an equalizer late in the opening quarter to tie it 3-3.

SHP was stopping shots throughout the quarter, but St. Ignatius mopped up its misses consistently. Wildcats senior attacker Chloe DelNegro, who scored a match-high four goals, got a second-chance opportunity and have her team a 4-3 lead with 19 seconds remaining in the first.

It was the first of three straight St. Ignatius goals. The Wildcats would never trail again.

“There were a lot of times where I felt like they were able to get the ball back,” Kridel said. “I think sometimes they got a little bit of help from the whistle. Sometimes just a little quicker first step, good bounce, all those things.”

SHP freshman Kat Dykes scored just two goals in the game, but they were both fun to watch. The tall, wiry strong attacker capped a breakaway by with a fast flip shot with 3:49 left in the third quarter to close the deficit to 8-5. After St. Ignatius junior Millie Bartlett answered with a goal off a penalty shot, Dykes and the Gators got the goal right back with a long, arcing pass into the back by freshman middle Maggie Goldstein, and a fast shuffle pass to Dykes set the freshman in motion to turn the corner and blast through two defenders to make it 9-6.

St. Ignatius controlled faceoffs throughout, though, minimizing Dykes’ scoring chances. SI senior Eleri Colon won nine draws, while Goldstein led SHP with six.

“Especially for us today not controlling the draw,” Kridel said. “That’s something that we’ve done all season. And I think SI really neutralized us, and it really limited our possessions. And that’s not something that’s happened to us all year.”

The current SHP roster went through an instant rebuild after winning the inaugural CCS title in 2021. There were no players remaining from that squad on the field Friday.

“I was anticipating a good freshman class because I knew all the girls already,” said Abbott, a sophomore. “It’s so great to play with such fresh, young talent. And I think, especially our sophomore class, we felt the same way last year. And I think the chemistry is really strong between both the classes. And I think that this goes beyond. I think that the whole team did a great job, and I think that we have so much to look forward to.”

Also not on the field Friday was St. Ignatius sophomore Phoebe Oliven. The Hillsborough native played in just two games early in the year before suffering a season-ending knee injury. Oliven vowed to return to the field next year, and was also glowing in the Wildcats’ postgame celebration, and shared her memories of playing in the 2023 CCS finals as a freshman, a game in which she scored one goal.

“I played in this game last year and it was so incredible,” Oliven said.