Edison girls’ lacrosse clinches second straight Sunset League title
Draw controls are a big part of girls’ lacrosse.
So are adjustments.
Corona del Mar coach Jessica Murray put senior captain Megan Schafer on the draws midway through Tuesday night’s pivotal match at Edison. The Sea Kings won 10 straight draws with Schafer at one point, rallying from a seven-goal deficit to take the lead.
Edison coach Olivia Smart countered, putting her own senior captain Madison Kruis on the draws.
Kruis helped her coach look, well, smart, as Edison struck back and earned a 22-19 victory that clinched its second straight Sunset League title.
“She’s got kind of a wonky draw that other teams have a hard time reading,” Smart said. “We just switched it up to her, and I thought she did a really good job of breaking that rut for us of missing all of those draws.”
Kruis, bound for Colorado Mesa University along with fellow Edison team captain Sofia Chock, agreed with her coach’s assessment of her unorthodox draw style.
“I basically just chuck it,” she said. “It’s mostly through the legs, just getting under the ball and then just ripping it behind you. A lot of times, the other team doesn’t expect it, because they’ve never seen it before. But our girls on the circle know what’s coming, so they’re prepared for it.”
Kruis and Chock both scored six goals Tuesday for Edison, which concluded the regular season with a 13-4 record and 5-0 in the Sunset League.
Brooklynn Peters and Alyssa Hesse each scored three goals for the winners, with Hesse adding five assists. Madison Moorman scored twice, Lauren Salem and Isabella Reyes also scored and goalkeeper Maya Renker made four saves.
“We have a young team,” said Edison senior defender Lila Crossett, the Chargers’ other team captain. “It’s been exciting to see everybody grow, get better and work with each other.”
CdM (10-8, 4-1), which finished in second place in league, was led by senior Frankie Garcia with nine goals and three assists.
Edison took a 10-3 lead midway through the first half on Kruis’ goal. At that point, Murray inserted backup goalkeeper Faith Chavez, who made seven saves.
And, with Schafer on the draws, CdM went ahead 12-11 by halftime on a late goal from Katie Sullivan. The lead was two, at 15-13, when Rihanna Quinn scored on Ashley Solarczyk’s assist with 19:15 remaining in the match.
“A win always feels better, let’s be honest,” Murray said. “But I think the turnaround we had from the beginning of the game to the end of the game … We were a different team. We’ve now had three games in a row that we’ve been down, and we’ve been able to come back and compete in games. That, to me, is something to build upon, especially going into playoffs.”
Murray said Garcia and fellow senior captain Abby Grace, who had four free position goals Tuesday, have each surpassed 200 goals for their CdM careers. They are the top two scorers in program history for the Sea Kings, who close out the regular season with an away match against St. Margaret’s on Thursday.
But Edison went up by five goals late Tuesday on Kruis’ sixth strike of the match, and CdM’s frantic comeback fell a bit short.
Both teams now prepare for the CIF Southern Section playoffs. Edison is ranked No. 7 in the latest Division 1 and 2 poll.
“We’re confident,” Chock said. “Our team has been on a super-high, with how we’re playing and how we’re connecting.”
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