Boys’ Lacrosse: CdM continues to dominate
Jordan Greenhall wasn’t around for the Corona del Mar High boys’ lacrosse game against Beckman last season, and neither were Max Kline and Hugh Crance. While Kline and Crance missed the game for different reasons, Greenhall was out with another knee injury.
Greenhall tore his right anterior cruciate ligament in the fourth game of last season, a year after tearing his left ACL. The road back from consecutive season-ending injuries hasn’t been easy for Greenhall, but there was Kline texting or calling him with the same message.
“Let’s go shoot. Let’s go play,” Kline said is what he told Greenhall every time.
“I wasn’t going to let him go.”
Greenhall has returned to lacrosse. He has played in four contests during his junior season, and he leads the team with a dozen goals and his eight assists tie Kline for the team lead.
Without Greenhall last season, CdM needed 11 goals to beat Beckman. The Sea Kings fell two goals short, and the Patriots stunned CdM, 10-9, earning their first win against CdM in the program’s history.
The two schools met on Wednesday, and by halftime, Greenhall helped the Sea Kings record 11 goals. Greenhall produced four of the goals, and the top-ranked team in California by Laxpower.com never let up, using last year’s setback to Beckman to drive the Sea Kings to a 16-1 rout at home.
“I’m sure some of the kids thought about it, particularly our seniors,” CdM Coach G.W. Mix said of last season’s loss to Beckman at Tustin High. “But we try not to focus on stuff like that. We worry about ourselves and do what we do. That was then.”
The Sea Kings (4-0) continue their hot start to the season, outscoring their first four opponents, 70-6. They almost shut out a team for the first time, but the Sea Kings allowed a goal in the final minute.
When Aidan O’Connor scored for the Patriots, CdM’s Hoyt Crance wasn’t in goal. Beckman never challenged Crance. The Yale-bound senior blanked the Patriots when he was in net, only having to make one save.
Crance had a quiet afternoon, thanks to CdM controlling possession. Jason Simaan, a junior committed to Brown, kept winning faceoff after faceoff and the Sea Kings kept pouring it on. In the first half, Kline scored three goals, and Brennan Greenwald, Sherwin Gersten, Nino Chavez and Ben Palitz had one goal apiece.
At halftime, CdM outshot Beckman, 32-3. The onslaught slowed a bit in the third quarter, only Gersten and Stephen Von Der Ahe found the back of the net. Palitz and Greenwald added goals in the fourth.
The Sea Kings’ attack appears unstoppable, and their defense, with Hugh Crance, a senior bound for Notre Dame, and Brett Greenlee, a senior bound for Denver, doesn’t break down. The season is still early, but Mix said this is one of the best teams ever assembled at CdM.
“They’re playing well now,” Mix said. “It’s certainly one of the more experienced defenses we’ve ever had. Those kids have been playing at that end together for three years now. That makes a big difference. They know one another’s strengths and one another’s weaknesses and they play to them and cover them up. They do a nice job as a unit. It’s fun to watch.”
The Sea Kings won’t play again until next week, when they’re at home against Los Alamitos on Tuesday and at Newport Harbor for the Battle of the Bay rivalry on Friday. In the meantime, Mix has another event to keep his team entertained.
Two of the top NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse programs in the country, No. 2 North Carolina (9-0) and No. 5 Maryland (5-1), are competing in Orange County on Saturday in the second edition of the Pacific Coast Shootout. Mix is the executive director of the event, which will be at Santa Ana Stadium at 7 p.m. Mix said the inaugural event drew about 5,500 fans, adding that more than 4,500 tickets have been sold for Saturday’s exhibition.
“I think what it does is that it shows all of our kids, all of our parents, and all of the younger players the game at its highest level,” Mix said of the college showcase, which fans can purchase tickets by visiting https://www.pclaxshootout.com. “It helps them understand the game better and see where they have to go [to get better]. Now they’ve got really good players to try to go … and emulate, and it really helps their games develop. It’s great for promoting and growing the game out here. [The event] absolutely [helps North Carolina and Maryland recruit on the West Coast] and they get out of that [cold] weather they got at home.”