The Palo Alto High School girls’ lacrosse team (1-2, 1-0 SCVAL) narrowly beat Gunn High School (1-3-1, 0-1) under a steady mist on the Paly turf Tuesday night.
Though the Lady Vikes carried a 2-0 lead after five minutes and remained in command for most of the night, they were not happy with their overall performance.
“We need to catch and throw better,” Paly’s first year head coach Jamie Nesbitt said. “We need to improve our stickwork and get our mental errors cleaned up.”
Powered by attack Lauren King (’12), the Titans came back to tie the score at three with 11:26 left in the first half. King finished the night with three goals for Gunn.
On the other side of the ball, Paly’s Charlotte Biffar (’13) had three goals, one of which came with two minutes left in the first half to put Paly up by two. Gunn came back with a quick goal to make the halftime score 6-5.
The second half saw more whistles than the first, but Paly managed to retain control.
After a Gunn goal was waved off early, Paly attack Rachel Shaffer (’11) added one of her three goals to make the score 9-7 in Paly’s favor. Defender Emma Beckstrom (’13) went on to make the score 11-7 with one of her two goals with 8:02 left in the game.
“We played pretty well but we could have played better,” Paly attack and captain Emily Benatar (’11) said. “Once we get a little more in sync [the games] will flow a lot better.”
Benatar went on to score an acrobatic goal with under four minutes to play, only to have it called off.
Gunn scored twice more in the final minutes, but was unable to come all the way back, and Paly won 11-9.
The Lady Vikes move on to face Menlo School tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. at Paly.
“Today, we played hard but not smart,” Nesbitt said. “Gunn had some talent, and we are going to have to make more adjustments in order to beat teams like Menlo.”
Paly played today at 4 p.m. against powerhouse Menlo at Paly.
