Casa lacrosse girls make U-turn to the top

The Casa Grande High School Lady Gauchos created a great deal of confusion among North Bay Girls Lacrosse League teams when they did an abrupt U-turn and started driving full speed down victory lane.

Casa Grande cruised right along in the wrong direction last season, its mediocre momentum marred only by one win and one tie.

That all changed on April 9 when the Lady Gauchos came from behind to defeat Cardinal Newman, 10-9, in a game played at Newman. Casa Grande had won four games prior to the Cardinal Newman contest, including defeating Petaluma, 12-9, but it was the win over highly regarded Cardinal Newman that made the Lady Gauchos start believing in themselves.

Once headed in the right direction, Casa Grande has stayed on an upward course ever since. With just three games left in the season starting this week, the Lady Gauchos are 9-1 (6-1 in league).

Casa Grande coach Bob Merwin said that, while no one could have foreseen such a dramatic improvement, there were signals that his young team (nine freshmen) was capable of good things.

“Many of the girls played for me on the River Cats (youth club team),” he said. “I knew they were a good group of players.”

He also noted that the Lady Gauchos were able to take some teams by surprise. “We were a complete unknown,” he explained. “No one saw us coming.”

When Merwin started putting his team together, he went to Ben Hewitt, the architect of the successful Casa boys team, for advice.

“We needed to create a new culture,” he said. “I saw what Ben had done with the boys, and I modeled our program after his program.”

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Casa has some talented players.

On the field, Trinity Merwin, the coach’s freshman daughter, sets the tone. She leads the team in scoring and assists. According to her father/coach, her value extends beyond her scoring numbers. “She makes the players around her better,” the coach explained.

Merwin isn’t the only Casa scorer. “We have six or seven girls who can take the ball to the net and score,” the coach said.

Several of the key lacrosse players are coming off Casa’s playoff basketball team. Some have limited lacrosse experience, but are all-around good athletes.

Freshman Sophia Gardea is only in her second year of lacrosse on any level, but she has been one of Casa’s top scorers. “She plays hard,” is the way Merwin describes her value to the team.

Senior Mia Cain was the Most Valuable Player of the basketball team. She has transferred her athletic talents to the lacrosse field. “She plays with attitude and heart,” the coach said.

Another freshman who has quickly made a mark for the Casa lacrosse team is Anaka Estrella, who developed into the key to the Casa defense.

Casa Grande has only four seniors on the team. In addition to Cain, there is Electra Phetphadoung, Jessica Rue Coulman and Kelsey Gomez-Fowers.

Gomez-Fowers is a strong all-around player and very experienced. She is in her fifth year of varsity soccer for Casa Grande. She played with the older girls as an eighth-grader when Casa Grande was still a club team and has been on the varsity all four years of its existence as an official high school team.

The coach credits much of the team’s success to the strong play of junior goalie Ashley Bosch. “She has had eight saves or more in at least six games,” the coach pointed out.

Going into this week’s play, the only Casa Grande defeat was a double-overtime loss at Windsor, and every player on the team, except one, a freshman defender, had scored.

It all adds up to a spectacular turn-around that has Casa Grande girls lacrosse not only headed in the right direction, but headed that way in a hurry.