A dream season for the Dos Pueblos High boys’ lacrosse team reached a significant milestone as the Chargers clinched an outright Channel League Championship with a 17-3 victory over rival Santa Barbara on Tuesday night.
The Chargers are the last remaining undefeated team in the state of California and improved their record to 17-0 overall and 7-0 in Channel League play.
“This season in general is a capstone moment for me and for a lot of these guys. This senior class, five or six of them have started since their freshman year, so we’ve had four years of these guys really putting in the work and building towards this moment,” said Dos Pueblos coach Lucas Martinez. “It’s great to win the league title. Obviously, we have our sights set on something bigger, but obviously, we are not going to take that for granted.”
The Chargers came out sluggish overall by their standards as Santa Barbara cut its deficit to 5-3 on the third goal of the game by Connor Jackson at the 5:38 mark of the second quarter.
Dos Pueblos snatched back the momentum with 30 seconds remaining in the first half when Jack Finneran scored off a pass from his twin brother, Dan Finneran, increasing the Dos Pueblos lead to 6-3.
“We definitely didn’t come out with the intensity that we built our name on, so the halftime talk was just about [how] we’ve got to win the 50-50 balls; we’ve gotta get out on hands defensively; we were just playing way too passive all over the field,” Martinez said. “We started playing our brand of lacrosse in the second half, and it obviously worked out better for us.”
Dan Finneran opened the second half with a goal off a slick pass from Roman Christou to open the second-half scoring and increase the Dos Pueblos lead to 7-3 with 9:37 remaining in the third quarter.
Dan Finneran finished with a team-high five goals and five assists.
The Chargers poured it on from there, outscoring Santa Barbara 6-0 in the third quarter and adding five more goals in the fourth quarter. In addition to the Finneran twins, seniors Parker Bentley and Gus Miller were key contributors offensively.
Dos Pueblos will conclude the regular season at San Marcos on Thursday. Santa Barbara will look to lock up a playoff spot at home against Cate on Thursday.
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