Lady Gauchos rolling on

The Casa Grande High School girls lacrosse team kept its season rolling Tuesday night, and even in defeat, Petaluma’s Lady Trojans may have earned a continuation of their own.

North Bay Girls Lacrosse League champion Casa Grande held off a furious finish by Petaluma to beat the T-Girls, 13-11, in the first round of the league playoffs. Casa will now face Cardinal Newman for the playoff championship Friday night at Casa Grande prior to moving on to the North Coast Section tournament next week.

Cardinal Newman, the only team to beat Casa Grande in league play, advanced to the league finals with an 11-3 victory over Windsor on Tuesday night.

In the boys league playoffs, Petaluma and Casa Grande will clash in the finals Friday night at Petaluma. Casa Grande defeated Rancho Cotate and league champion Petaluma disposed of Cardinal Newman, 15-7, Tuesday night.

The Petaluma girls played Casa Grande almost even right to the end in Tuesday’s thriller on the Casa Grande field, causing Lady Trojan coach Sarah Shada to consider applying for an at-large berth in the NCS tournament.

“We’ve talked about it,” she said. “The girls want to keep playing.”

The tournament field will be announced Monday. Casa Grande, as league champ, gets an automatic spot in the NCS field.

Petaluma proved a worthy opponent for Casa Grande in the first round of the league playoffs, getting the attention of the Lady Gauchos early by jumping out to a 3-1 lead.

But then Casa settled in to doing what it has done all season, scoring with a number of different weapons. The Lady Gauchos ran off five straight goals from four different attackers for a 6-3 lead.

Although Petaluma hung tough and trailed only 8-6 at the half, Casa Grande seemed to be in charge, continually keeping pressure on the Petaluma goal.

Key instigators for Casa Grande were freshmen Sophia Gardea and Trinity Merwin. Each scored three goals in the game and sparked the Lady Gaucho attack. In addition to her goals, Merwin had five assists.

Casa Grande pushed its lead to five goals (13-8) with just under seven minutes left in the game, but then the Petaluma defense went nose-to-nose with the quick Casa Grande attackers, shutting the league champions out without a goal over the final six minutes as the T-Girls rallied back behind goals from Whitney Royall, Elizabeth Manka and Nichole Costa.

The final four minutes seemed a lifetime of anxiety as Petaluma desperately scratched for a way to find a way past the tenacious Casa Grande defense and standout goal keeper Ashley Bosch, who had 11 saves. At the end, Casa Grande prevailed, advancing the Lady Gauchos to their meeting with Cardinal Newman, but there were no real tears on the Petaluma side.

“Our girls are sad that we lost, but they feel good about the way they played,” explained Shada. “It was just a good game.”

Casa Grande coach Bob Merwin noted that the Lady Gauchos were playing short handed. “We had three of our defenders out with injuries and had to bring up some JVs,” he explained.

He said he knew it was going to be a tough game, noting that Casa’s two previous wins over its rivals were both by just three goals.

“This was a good battle,” he said. “Petaluma has a good team. It was a good game.”

Casa Grande’s scoring came from Megan Mainaris, Gardea and Merwin, each with three goals; Electra Phetplhadoung with two and Ariaka Estrella and Arianna Tracy with one each.

Royall led Petaluma with four goals. Costa and Manka scored two each and Kathryn Wood, Eda Grace Spaletta and Brooklyn Shattuck each scored one.

Petaluma goal keepers Sarah Graham and Audrey Nagy combined for eight saves.