On Wednesday night, the boys’ lacrosse team overpowered the San Ramon Valley (SRV) Wolves in a nail-biting 8-7 victory.
The first quarter started with high intensity and pressure from both sides. The Bears quickly gained possession of the ball, and senior captain Peter Koren swept across the field, dodging players and quickly scoring the first goal of the game within three minutes. With some stellar defense by M-A, the Bears quickly regained possession, and with four minutes left in the quarter, Koren scored once more after rebounding his own shot putting the Bears up by two, to close out the quarter.
The Wolves channeled their anger into the second quarter, scoring almost immediately after the players took the field. After multiple turnovers from the Bears,, the Wolves scored two more goals and went into halftime up 3-2.
Junior Eric Torre brought a burst of energy into the start of the second half, winning the face-off. The Wolves responded in their next possession by hitting a hard shot at M-A’s goal, but junior Olivier Yuk made an incredible save to prevent a bigger deficit.
Keeping the momentum high, Koren raced down the field and whipped a pass to junior captain Colin Kryger to score, tying the game at three. The Bears’ intensity kept growing on their next possession, with a perfect pass from Kryger to sophomore Carey Wolf, whose shot was just wide of the goal.
The Wolves did not back down. They took advantage of a turnover from M-A and slipped the ball past the hands of Yuk, putting them up 4-3 midway through the third quarter.
Torre won the ensuing face-off, and Koren sprinted down the field to hammer in yet another goal, leveling the score at 4-4. Koren’s goal was quickly offset by another Wolves goal with five minutes left in the quarter. However, a second Koren-to-Kryger connection tied the game at 5-5 going into the final quarter.
Going into the fourth quarter, senior Rex Yeh reflected on the team’s pep-talk and said, “Everyone agreed to play for each other, to leave everything you have on the field and fight for the next 12 minutes and win.”
Torre unsurprisingly won the face-off to start the quarter, setting the attitude for the rest of the game. A foul called on the Wolves put the Bears up one man early in the quarter, which Koren capitalized on, pushing M-A forward to a score of 6-5 with a powerful bottom-corner shot. The Bears dominated the next couple of minutes with two more powerful, near-miss shots from Koren.
A long run by freshman Ford Long ended with a beautiful pass to Kryger to put the Bears up 7-5 with just eight minutes to play.
However, the Wolves stepped up their game, forcing M-A to rethink their lead after Yuk made an amazing save just before the Wolves’ shot hit off of the post. SRV did not need another invitation to score though, and they converted their next shot to bring the deficit back to one.
On a decisive possession for M-A, senior Calvin Annison slung the ball to Koren, who snuck in his fifth goal of the game and bumped the Bears’ lead back up to two with just a few minutes to play.
After the Wolves called a timeout in the last minute of the game, they put up a final fight and snuck a ball in the bottom left corner of M-A’s goal. Despite their efforts, the Wolves could not tie the score because of great goalkeeping by Yuk, and the game ended 8-7 in M-A’s favor.
Senior Ethan Vesely reflected on the Bears’ captains performance by saying, “You have captains for a reason and this was one of those games that showed why they’re captains. They lifted us up and gave us the motivation to fight hard.”
Senior Oskar Flodh also added, “We were fired up to defend our home turf. We faced a tough first half, but we flipped a switch and secured a well-deserved win.”
