The records might not show it, but both Tigard lacrosse teams have seen a lot of success and growth on the field through the season’s first month.
As of our press deadline, the Tigard girls lacrosse team sits at 1-7, and the boys team is 3-5.
The coaches for each squad said they have a good amount of first-year players, either to the entire sport or just to playing at the varsity level. They also have players trying new positions and getting accustomed to the game itself.
In both scenarios, the coaches — Spencer Madden for the girls team and Tanner Bean for the boys — are leaning heavily on their more experienced players to help the younger players.
On the girls team, that has fallen to Addison Ley and Maya Werner.
“They’ve done a good job of being a coach on the field, and just reiterating some of the stuff that they’ve heard me preach,” Madden said. “Maybe from a different voice, it starts landing a little bit more. Then some of the younger players maybe feel like they’re doing it now for the seniors as opposed to for the coach, which I always think is a great, great atmosphere to have.”
For the boys squad, Carson McGuire and Callan Hiser are leading the young team.
“You always need people for the players to look for, players they look up to,” Bean said. “And both of those guys are phenomenal examples for the team as far as players. They’re good teammates, good people, and they’re just super important to give us opportunities to find options to score.”
Here’s a look at how each team is doing so far in the first month of the season:
Girls Team
The Tigard girls lacrosse team dropped its first seven games of the season, but signs are starting to pick up for the Tigers.
In their most recent game as of our press deadline, the Tigers picked up their first win and scored 14 goals. Their previous season-high was four goals. They also gave up 11 goals, their second-lowest total on the season.
Ley led the way with six goals in the game. She has a team-high 16 goals this year to go with five assists, also the most on the team.
“The team goes where she takes us game to game,” Madden said. “The challenge for her is getting her to not need to be the best player all the time, every single possession, but to trust the team more and play more team style. She’s great. She can go and win us a game like she did tonight, but that’s how we can get even more competitive in finding our spots, getting the ball to attack from certain areas, owning the ball, and time of possession.”
Another player Madden had high praise for this season was Aquilla Mota, the team’s goalie. This is Mota’s first year playing the sport, and Madden said trying to learn lacrosse and playing in goal at the same time is a lot to take on.
Madden said it was her choice to give goaltending a try, and deciding the stick there for the season has made things easier for everyone else.
“This team would be in huge trouble if she hadn’t volunteered to play goalie and stuck through those really crappy first few games,” he said. “I think she had one practice as goalie and then played her first game there. She changed the season by being willing to step up.”
If she hadn’t done so, Madden said they’d have to rotate a new player as goalie every game, and the team would hate it.
“None of them would be good because they wouldn’t have time to develop,” he said.
He has also been impressed with his team’s starting defense: Werner, Emina Mehmedovic, Abigail Offel, and Sejla Mehmedovic.
“Our entire starting defense is phenomenal,” Madden said. “We’re spending most of the season on defense, so the stats maybe don’t look like they’re doing a great job because we let in a lot of goals. But possession by possession, they are crushing it.”
Boys Team
The Tigard boys team also kicked off the season on a losing streak, dropping its first three games. Since then, the Tigers won three of their next four before losing to rival Tualatin, 16-12.
But even in the loss, there were positives to take away. Tualatin came out strong, putting up seven goals in the first quarter. The Tigers held Tualatin to just one goal in the second and three in the third, but were never able to tie up the game or take a lead.
“A lot of times it takes us a second to settle in defensively, as well as offensively,” Bean said. “As a team, if you come out and you’re flying around and you’re just clicking on all cylinders, you can take advantage, and I think Tualatin did a good job of coming out of the gate ready to go.”
It was the two leaders for Tigard who kept the Tigers in that game, with McGuire scoring twice in the first and Hiser adding in one of his own. Hiser finished the game with five goals, and McGuire scored four.
Along with those two, Bean said Reece Taddeo has been a big part of the team’s success this year.
“He’s been a super important part of the program the last few years,” Bean said. “He’s a really good shooter. He probably has one of the fastest shots on the team, and he’s always going all out.”
Coincidentally, the Tigard boys team also has a first-year player in goal, Alfonso Barrientos.
“He’s way too good of a goalie for a first-year player,” Bean said.
