Underdog’s Day

Sitting in a hallway between the weight room and girls’ locker room at North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake is a large but otherwise nondescript cardboard box containing a variety of soccer-related items.

Among the items piled inside are a new pair of goalkeeper’s gloves, a pair of used cleats, a rumpled jersey and warmup jacket, and some dusty-but-not-too-worn shin guards.

The box, not quite half full, is emptied on a regular basis by junior midfielder Jamie Artsis. It is likely to be full soon because the top-seeded Wolverines could do little to keep their season from coming to an early end with a 4-1 upset loss to unseeded Los Alamitos in a Southern Section Division I girls’ soccer first-round playoff game Friday at Harvard-Westlake.

“We have so much stuff, and it just sits there once we’re done with it,” Artsis said. “Why not do something with it?”

Artsis came up with the idea for drop-off boxes in the Harvard-Westlake locker room and gym and at her old middle school in Chatsworth for sports equipment to be donated and distributed to underprivileged children throughout the world via Passback, an international charity she heard of through Eurosport magazine.

“I love soccer, and this is about kids who love soccer and might need equipment,” Artsis said. “Hopefully, this will help them do it.

“I feel very lucky. I come from a good family, I live in a great place. I have everything, and I get to play soccer, which I love to do.”

Artsis’ words rang true even after the Wolverines’ disappointing loss. Los Alamitos players were loving their sport, too, after the Griffins overcame a disappointing league season, several injuries and their underdog status to defeat Harvard-Westlake (15-1-5), which was the No. 3-ranked team in the nation according to one publication and the No. 2 team in The Times’ Southland rankings before the game.

The Wolverines had earned shares of the last two Southern Section Division IV championships, but were competing at the Division I level for the first time.

Presented with a formidable obstacle, the Wolverines were unable clear it, mostly because they were unable to clear all the Griffins’ corner kicks.

Three of Los Alamitos’ four goals came off corner kicks, and their prowess on the set plays forced the Wolverines to play catch-up all day. Junior forward Niccole Grimaldi scored twice and sophomore fullback Julie Megordan scored one goal and assisted on two others. Natalie Welsh gave the visitors a 1-0 lead on a goal off a corner kick by Megordan in the 29th minute.

Harvard-Westlake tied the score, 1-1, in the 39th minute on Tracy Lansing’s 15th goal of the season. But with a second-half surge by the Griffins, the Wolverines were gone from the playoffs.

Grimaldi scored in the 60th minute off another corner kick by Megordan, who converted another corner kick into the Griffins’ third, back-breaking goal in the 63rd minute. Grimaldi closed out the scoring with her ninth goal of the season on a 10-yard shot in the final minute of play. Megordan has scored in each of the Griffins’ last five games.

“To come in here as the third-place team in our league and knock off the top-seeded team is just incredible,” Grimaldi said.

“We just capitalized. It wasn’t like they were pretty goals or anything. If it happens once, you can just say, ‘OK, cover that next time.’ But three times, that can just kill you.”

The Wolverines recovered quickly from the shock of the loss and refused to dwell on their only defeat this season.

“We were expecting to go all the way, and hoping to, and we thought we could,” said senior defender Katie DeWitt. “I don’t want this to be my memory of my soccer season, and I don’t think it should be.”

Neither does Lansing, who will attend USC on scholarship.

“I don’t think today’s game was indicative of how we did or what we could have done,” she said. “It’s just 80 minutes in a whole season. But we gave our all, and that’s all you can ask for.”

Except for donating any unused soccer equipment, that is.