One year ago, the school’s boys varsity lacrosse team beat cross town rivals Mountain View High School for the first time in the team’s history. On this day, the team set out to make last year’s win the beginning of a pattern, rather than a flash in the pan. Being St. Patrick’s Day, the Eagles were looking to take advantage of the luck in the air. Unfortunately, the luck ran short and Mountain was able to get revenge for last year, winning the game by the score of 11-5.

“In order to win, we just needed to play a whole game,”senior goalie Liam Mahoney said. “We had a couple mental lapses that hurt and that’s how they were able to keep the lead.”

When Los Altos was firing on all cylinders, there was no chance that Mountain View could stop them from scoring. It was moments of brilliance from junior attacker Jordan Jenab and senior middie Matthew Heintzen that kept Los Altos in the game. Yet, as mentioned above, the mental lapses outnumbered the shining moments, giving Mountain View the advantage.

Down 2-6 entering the third, Matthew scored two goals in a row. You could feel Los Altos gaining momentum and it looked as if they were going to bring the game back level. However, one late reaction from the Los Altos defense and Mountain View halted the Eagles charge with a goal against the run of play. This widened the Spartans lead back to three and it took a lot out of the Los Altos players.

“We had a nice push at the start of the third quarter and got the game back within reach,” Liam said. “The frustrating part was that our [defense] unit had let in and easy goal as we were [about to] get back into the game.”

Mountain View was able to dominate the fourth quarter, outscoring the Eagles 3-0. The Mountain View defense was well disciplined, but it was the unforced errors from the Eagles that let the offense down.

“Mountain View did a great job on putting pressure on our offense,” senior captain Cole Botsford said. “But, the loss was on us as a whole team.”

The next game for the team will be against Carlmont on March 22.  The next home game will be on March 29 against Leland. One thing is for sure, the Eagles will work to make up for their loss today.

“There’s a million excuses for why we lost today, but the only valid reason is that we didn’t play our best,” Cole said. “We’ll be back at it again [in] practice tomorrow so we can get the win on Monday.”