Dos Pueblos survived a fourth quarter comeback against Huntington Beach in the CIF-SS Division 2 Boys Lacrosse Quarterfinal Wednesday at Scott O’Leary Stadium.
The Chargers’ defense stepped up to protect the lead late in the game to preserve Dos Pueblos’ unblemished record. With the 11-8 win over Huntington Beach, the Chargers are now 20-0, and are the only undefeated team in the entire state of California.
This season has been a magical run for Dos Pueblos, a team with a group of 17 seniors who have helped shape the program into a powerhouse, defeating teams like Sierra Canyon and Oaks Christian earlier this season.
“When this senior class came in as freshmen, we barely had a team,” said Dos Pueblos Head Coach Lucas “Half of them started as freshmen… And they’ve really carried this program to where it is.”
In the Quarterfinals, Huntington Beach mounted a second half comeback before the Dos Pueblos defense — anchored by seniors Mitchell Maskerey and goaltender Danny Perez — locked in to secure the win.
“The whole time, when this game started to get a little crazy, I just kept telling them, ‘Hey, we’ve been here before,’” Martinez said.”These guys have played three postseasons. So we really just calmed down, thought about that, and played our game.”
The game was a back-and-forth battle in which the teams traded momentum and goals, with Huntington Beach’s Ryan Soeltz scoring within the first two minutes of the first quarter, then Dos Pueblos’s Dan Finneran responding to tie up the game at 1-1 before Huntington Beach
took a lead 2-1 when WIll Minter scored a goal with six minutes left in the first quarter.
Dos Pueblos then scored two goals in the last 14 seconds of the first quarter, with Dan Finneran hooking up with Gus Miller who tied the game at 2-2, followed by offensive standout Jack Finneran scoring his first goal of the game just seconds later to give the Chargers a 3-2 lead as the quarter ended.
The Chargers scoring run continued in the second quarter, where Dos Pueblos dominated with three more unanswered goals. First, Gus Miller scored early in the quarter to give Dos Pueblos a 4-2 lead. Less than a minute later, the Finneran brothers connected when Jack assisted Dan for his second goal of the game to extend the lead to 5-2.
The Chargers did not let up, peppering Huntington Beach with at least six shots on goal for the rest of the quarter, with Jack Finneran finding paydirt with his second goal of the game to give Dos Pueblos a 6-2 lead heading into halftime.
The teams traded goals in the third quarter, with Dos Pueblos’ Orion Prewarski scoring the Chargers’ sixth unanswered goal with a deep shot from the left side early in the action. Huntington Beach’s Will Minter answered right back less than ten seconds later for his second goal of the game to cut into the lead 7-3. The Chargers wasted no time, as Jack Finneran scored his third goal of the game less than 20 seconds later to extend the lead to 8-3.
Huntington Beach cut the lead to 8-4 before the Chargers extended the lead again, with Dan Finneran assisting Parker Bentley to give Dos Pueblos a 9-4 lead.
The fourth quarter got interesting when Huntington Beach’s Cale Burke scored within the first seven seconds to cut the lead to 9-5. A minute later, Dos Pueblos answered with a goal from Prewarski to take a 10-5 lead.
The Oilers then went on a big run. Huntington Beach scored three unanswered goals to cut the lead to two goals, 10-8, with less than seven minutes to go.
With their undefeated season on the line, the Chargers locked in on defense, with Perez making four key blocks late in the game, while Parker Bentley added an insurance goal —his second of the game — to give Dos Pueblos the 11-8 win.
Dos Pueblos used a balanced attack in the win, with five different players scoring at least two goals. Jack Finneran led the team with a hat trick.
“We never know who’s going to be the guy to step up,”said Coach Martinez.“ If they try to take away one guy, we have other guys that can step up. And I think today we saw that.”
Coach Martinez said he was proud of the team’s undefeated record, but that he didn’t feel like it added any extra pressure on the squad. “It’s a nice thing to put on Instagram, but we always know the next game is the one that we have to win,” he said. “So what we’ve done in the past doesn’t matter. It’s what we still have to do. And we’ve got two more to go.”
With the win, the Chargers are now 20-0, and will host Oaks Christian in the Division 2 Semifinals Saturday.
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