Girls lacrosse cuts season short in league

In their 2016-2017 season, the girl’s lacrosse team had their record performance of 5-7. Although they didn’t make it to CIF, the coaches and players all agree that they improved as individuals and as a team more than they ever anticipated.“One of our biggest improvements for the season was working together and coming together as a team,” coach Justine Beirne said. “We also learned how deep the girls can dig to get what they want. This season was a major learning curve and all the girls did a great job of keeping up with everything that was thrown at them.”Throughout the season, the team played three new teams. In many of these encounters, the players were able to surprise themselves with their performance and gain some confidence for the seasons to come. “The best part of the season was beating El Segundo, especially the first time,” Iris Watanabe (’18) said. “We were expecting them to be a really good team and it really gave us a confidence boost going into the rest of the season. We really felt good about everything we had done and it showed us that our training paid off.”Going into the offseason, their main focus will be on passing, catching and defense.“I feel like the team has a pretty solid offensive base but we need to work on a defense that can back it up,” Beirne said. “Working on assisting the goalie and trying to keep the ball on the opposition’s side.”  Beirne plans to take full advantage of the sophomore heavy team. Since there will be a lot of returning players, the team can start thinking about plans and strategies for next season. Many players believe that if they keep improving at the rate they are now, they will be able to make it to CIF next year.“We all worked really hard this season and to finish it felt really rewarding,” Jaelyn Anderson (’19) said. “We got so much better this year, and if we can keep it up we will keep surprising ourselves next year and hopefully we can make it all the way to CIF.”