Liv Plourde scored a game-winning goal with less than a minute on the clock to give San Marcos girls lacrosse a dramatic 11-10 win over Laguna Beach in the CIF-SS Div. 2 playoff opener on Monday at Warkentin Stadium.
Plourde’s late-game heroics and a strong defensive second half from the Royals allowed them to punch their ticket to the second round on Thursday, where they will be on the road against St. Margaret’s.
“I feel like the team played very well,” San Marcos head coach Paul Ramsey said. “We were outstanding with our division three (regular season) schedule and then got surprised with getting popped into D2.
“We played outstanding all season, and then we showed that we deserved to be in division two, so it has worked out.”
With the game tied at 10-10 and 1:39 left in regulation, the Royals had possession of the ball following a scramble. Ramsey called a timeout and drew up a play for a duo that had been in sync all game.
Out of the timeout, San Marcos milked some clock before the ball found Victoria Aldana on the outside, who delivered a pinpoint pass to Liv Plourde cutting across the defense. Plourde turned and fired a shot into the back of the net for the 11-10 lead with 48 seconds on the clock.
“We ran what we wanted to run on offense, the timeout was to compose them and make sure nobody did a hasty move to goal, which some of our girls like to do,” Ramsey said. “It was more to compose, set up the plan that they already knew and just refresh it.”
Plourde, who ended the day with a game-high six goals, then won the ensuing faceoff and the Royals ran out the clock to clinch the victory.
“[Plourde] is a really strong midfielder who never wants to come off the field,” Ramsey said. “Today we couldn’t take her off the field, and she performed really well in that stay-on-the-whole-time situation.
The Royals got the scoring started two minutes into the game when Clara Stump dumped it off to Gigi Mills, who snuck her shot past the goalkeeper for the early 1-0 lead.
Laguna Beach answered quickly with a penalty goal courtesy of Tess Smialowicz to tie it up at 1-1. After a few minutes of back-and-forth play, Laguna Beach took its first lead of the game on a goal by Ruby Samson to make it 2-1 with 5:40 left in the quarter
That lead lasted just 15 seconds as San Marcos won the faceoff, moved the ball upfield and Victoria Aldana found Mills cutting across the defense for her second goal of the day and a 2-2 tie.
That duo connected once again less than two minutes later, as Aldana fed Mills for her third straight score to begin the game and regain the lead at 3-2.
The Royals continued to roll for the rest of the first as Sadi Adams lobbed a pass over the defense to Liv Plourde for a score, and Adams scored a penalty goal to take a 5-2 lead into the second.
“It gets the energy going when you score a goal,” Ramsey said. “I get energized when someone wins a really good ground ball, but the girls all get energized when there’s a goal scored.
“So, getting the early lead and having Gigi successful like that brought some energy for us.”
The Breakers opened the second-quarter scoring with a turnaround goal by Samson. However, San Marcos got that goal right back when Adams hit Plourde in stride down the field, and Plourde buried the shot to bring the lead to 6-3 with 9:48 left in the half.
Laguna Beach then caught fire, rattling off three unanswered goals in a matter of minutes from Addison Berg (2) and Smialowicz to tie the game at 6-6 with 7:16 on the clock.
That score held for the majority of the second quarter, but Berg scored on a penalty shot with 41 seconds left to give the Breakers a 7-6 halftime advantage.
San Marcos came out of the break on fire, scoring two goals in the first minute of the third on goals by Josephine Grossman and Plourde, assisted by Mills and Stump, respectively.
Plourde followed that up with another score out of the middle of the defense to extend the newfound lead to 9-7 with 10:22 left in the third.
“So we just talked at halftime about ‘Let’s go around that [defensive] mass,’” Ramsey said. “I’m not saying we did it 100% of the time, but we went around the mass, slow-break style is the offensive term, often enough that we got the game, basically.”
The action cooled down for the rest of the third quarter, as the lone goal came from Laguna Beach’s Piper Halpern to cut the San Marcos lead down to 9-8 with one quarter to play.
After a long San Marcos possession came up empty to begin the fourth, Laguna Beach evened the score at 9-9 with a running goal by Samson with nine minutes left on the clock.
The Royals retook the lead at the 8:07 mark thanks to strong ball movement that ended with Aldana finding Plourde for the goal and the 10-9 advantage.
Following strong defensive stands from both sides, Laguna Beach knotted the score back up once again at 10-10 on a penalty goal by Samson with 3:32 remaining.
After some back-and-forth action, the Royals came out of the timeout and secured the game-winner courtesy of Plourde.
San Marcos will take an overall record of 18-2 into its matchup with St. Margaret’s, who finished the regular season 12-3 and won the Pacific Coast League.
“We know they’re good off the draw, they have a couple of six-foot-tall centers,” Ramsey said of his second-round opponent. “So we’ll probably try to match up with that as best we can, and take care of the ball.”