Lacrosse: Foothill wins championship Goings away

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Foothill ended up winning the unofficial Southern Section championship for boys’ lacrosse with an 11-7 victory over Palos Verdes in a rematch of last year’s title game.

That makes Foothill a back-to-back winner since the Southern Section began sanctioning the sport, although because fewer than 20% of its member schools participate, it does not sanction the championship.

Tyler Brown scored four goals and Trent Jones three for Foothill. The game most valuable player was defenseman Michael Clenshaw, who held Palos Verdes scoring machine Nolan Semel to just two goals and one of those was when Foothill was short-handed.

But man, you had to feel for Foothill’s senior goalkeeper Sam Goings,who had nine saves on the night.

He took a shot to the groin in the final seconds of the third quarter on a play in which he got an assist. Most agreed the play was the biggest of the game because Jones’ score made it 9-5 with 10 seconds left in the third quarter and absolutely sucked the life out of Palos Verdes. Still, it was Goings who was aching the entire fourth quarter. He even did his postgame interview complete bent over.

So when the final horn sounded, all Foothill players made a beeline to Goings and piled on. Man, that is not the way to treat a hero.

‘It was a little scary because I’m a little hurt,’ Goings recalled when he saw about 50 teammates headed at him. ‘But it’s a good feeling.’

-- Martin Henderson