Saturday night, the Paly Vikes took on the Gunn Titans in the SCVAL championship game. Despite a fourth quarter comeback, the Vikings lost 9-5 to the Titans.
“The first three quarters were pretty rough, we came out kind of slow,” Lucas Novak (’15) said. “In the last quarter we saw a lot of hope.”
The first quarter started off fast for the Titans. Gunn won the first sprint, and immediately scored their first goal within 15 seconds. After a blocked shot by Gunn’s goalie, Gunn came back with another goal 55 seconds in to give the Titans a 2-0 lead. After two stopped goals by the Vikings’ goalie Jake Weinstein (’14), Gunn scored again with 2:11 left in the quarter. Gunn ended the quarter with another goal with 46 seconds left, to put the score at 4-0 going in to the second.
The second quarter started off with Gunn winning the sprint. In a low scoring quarter, Gunn scored the only goal in the last 20 seconds before the half bringing the score to 5-0.
The Titans won the third sprint and scored the first goal of the quarter within 30 seconds. Another goal by Gunn brought the score to 7-0, but Paly retaliated with their first goal of the game by Winston Rosati (’16) with 1:46 left. Gunn quickly scored the last goal of the quarter with a minute and a half left to bring the score to 8-1 beat the end of the quarter.
Despite a slow first three quarters, Paly came back strong in the fourth and final quarter.
“I’m very pleased with the last quarter, we played really well,” captain Omri Newman (’14) said.
The Vikings won the fourth quarter’s sprint and Novak put up a goal 1:33 in to put the score at 8-2. Kian McHugh (’14) scored another goal for the Vikings with his 5-meter penalty shot. With 4:04 left Novak scored again, and Sam Kelley (’14) put up another goal for Paly bringing the score to 8-5. Gunn finished off the night with a 5-meter penalty shot to win the game 9-5.
Despite their loss, Paly will advance to the Central Coast Section tournament as the no. 3 seed. The Vikes remain positive about their future games in the CCS tournament.
“This [loss] had no effect on our CCS performance,” Coach Brandon Johnson said. “We will tweak a few things [for CCS], it all depends on who we are playing. We’re pretty confident in what we have.”
