LAS FLORES – In a matchup of the South Coast League’s top two teams, the Tesoro boys lacrosse team came flying out of the gates Tuesday at home against San Clemente, scoring twice in the first three minutes.
Four quarters later they came flooding off the sidelines to celebrate another narrow victory, 16-14, over their league rival, inching them closer to sealing a league title.
“We’ve had a challenge with San Clemente in the past,” Tesoro coach Adam Miner said. When the two teams met in March, the Titans edged out a 12-11 victory.
“So we put this as a flag in our season as a game that would give us an opportunity to win the championship or not,” Miner said.
Chase Warner led the Titans with four goals while Sage DeVault (three), AJ Chiono (two) and Matt Costanzo (two) also had multi-goal games. Alex Boyle, Brandon Mayo, Matt Adam, Jacob Douglas and Blake Warner also found the back of the net for the hosts.
“Our offense is good, they’ll find opportunities there and that’s what they did once we got on our side of the field,” Miner said.
Tesoro goalie Gunner Garn made 20 saves, 15 of them in the first half.
San Clemente got four goals from Colin Zines to pace its offense. Peyton Garrett added three goals while Jack Renard, Robbie Burns and Austin Streeter each had two. Jordan Riggs also scored for the Tritons.
The No. 4 Titans (11-1, 5-0) stunned the No. 7 Tritons (9-4, 3-2) with the pair of early goals and the hosts were out to a 6-2 lead by the end of the first quarter.
“It was a big shutdown real quick,” Streeter said. “It’s tough.”
Down 8-4 midway through the second quarter, San Clemente coach Mike Hutnick made a change in goal, replacing senior Thomas Ahola with freshman Austin Boyer.
The Tritons also began to dominate faceoffs and ground balls, establishing a marked possession advantage that allowed them to trim the halftime deficit to 8-5.
After the break San Clemente continued to prove it would not go away, scoring three unanswered goals to tie the score at nine with 4:05 left in the third quarter.
“It was really about owning the ball,” Miner said. “They’ve got a great offense. Our best defense against them is to own the ball.
“They clamped down hard and they started to win the ground balls and get possessions and they started to score accordingly.”
Tesoro responded to the challenge, going on a 7-2 run from the end of the third into the fourth quarter to recapture the momentum and build a 16-11 lead with just less than five minutes to play.
Right on cue, however, San Clemente made one final push. Garrett scored twice in a 30-second span to cut the deficit to three at 2:31 left and Riggs’ goal with 25 seconds left made it 16-14, but time ran out on the Tritons’ comeback.
“At halftime coach kind of told us to step it up, get those (ground balls) back because we kind of slowed down … and didn’t really get much possession time,” Chase Warner said. “We finally picked it up in the second half of the game and came up with a win.”
The Titans have three games left in the regular season, all coming against league opponents.
Contact the writer: 949-454-7323 or jwilkinson@ocregister.com
