Girls lacrosse 2011 season preview

Los Alamitos girls lacrosse team has a new coach and a bunch of new players.

But the Griffins are still favored to repeat as Orange County champions.

Los Alamitos won 40 games in a row over two years and captured two straight county titles and two consecutive U.S. Lacrosse Division 1 Southern Section crowns under Meredith Meyran.

Meyran resigned over the off-season and moved to the East Coast with her husband, Kevin, the former Los Al boys lacrosse coach, to raise a family.

New coach Liz Connelly hopes the Griffins, who were 20-0 last year, can maintain their winning ways.

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“We’re looking good so far,” Connelly said. “We have a really hard working team. Everybody is pretty goal oriented and excited to get this season started and give it our best shot.”

Connelly knows that opposing teams will be pointing toward beating the Griffins.

“Everybody should be gunning for everybody this year,” she said. “It’s a game-by-game, week-by-week type of thing. We plan on coming out and not taking anybody lightly and giving it our best every game.”

Los Alamitos loses a number of talented players, including county MVP Shaina Denny, a midfielder, who scored 61 goals and recorded 37 assists.

But Connelly believes there is enough talent to help the team continue to be competitive.

“We definitely lost a lot of our experience, but Los Al is a great program, from our frosh-soph team to our JV to our varsity, we’ve got a good feeder program coming and we’re going to be all right.”

Leading the way is senior midfielder Melissa Hastie and sophomore attack Julie Crowell, who were both All-Sunset League players last year. Crowell was also second team all-county last year.

Other top players include junior defenders Keaton Otake and Sophia Aragon, who were starters last year.

Hastie, Otake, Aragon and Crowell were all named to the Women’s National Tournament team.

Los Alamitos will be grouped in a new-look Sunset-Century League which will include El Dorado, Esperanza, Foothill, Newport Harbor and Yorba Linda.