BHHS Boys Lacrosse Bouncing Back in '11

The ball took a lot of funny bounces for Beverly Hills High boys lacrosse in 2010, although the end result wasn’t very humorous—a 1-16 record that included four shutouts and 11 losses by 10 or more goals.

But after seven games in 2011, the Normans have tripled their win total from last year. They improved to 3-4 with an impressive 9-3 home win over Chadwick on Wednesday, March 16. 

Junior attackman Maddy O’Neal led the way with five goals.

“He finally showed his leadership potential,” BHHS head coach Steve Taylor said of O’Neal, who had scored just five goals in the team’s first six games combined. “He’s done it in practice, he just hadn’t done it in a game before. It was great to see.”

Junior Nick Heller, Beverly Hills’ leading scorer so far this season, added a pair of goals. Senior Adam Lasman and sophomore Jason Friedberg also scored.

The team closed out the 2010 season with a 19-0 loss at league champion Palos Verdes. But this year, after beating Birmingham 13-2 for their first win, the Normans lost at Palos Verdes by a 12-3 count—a notable improvement.

“Palos Verdes has a lot of [future NCAA] Division I players and they usually go pretty far in the playoffs, and we showed that we’re capable of being a really good team,” senior midfielder and co-captain Russ Siadatian said. “We just have to take away all the little lapses in our defense and keep possession of the ball.”

Beverly Hills controlled the flow of the March 16 game against Chadwick. Compared to last year and some of this season’s losses, the defense spent a good deal of time watching the offense play—a welcomed change of pace.

“We don’t get off a lot of shots, but the shots we do make, a majority of them go in,” Siadatian said.

The Normans need to finish among the top three teams in the eight-team Ocean League to make the playoffs, something they last accomplished three years ago when the squad's 10 seniors were freshmen. But that group is in its fourth season together and their well-developed chemistry is starting to show.

“We’ve been in every game, which is great,” said Taylor, in his second year as head coach. “The kids are playing well."

Beverly Hills had already beaten Chadwick once this season, but only by a 6-5 margin in a match that went to double overtime. This time around the Normans took command from the start, building a 5-1 lead by halftime.

“We played with a lot of intensity, that was the difference,” Taylor said. “The whole game, we were very intense as opposed to the game before with them.”

At the halftime break, Taylor and assistant coach Yaron Sadka stressed the importance of not allowing Chadwick to cut into the four-goal lead. Beverly Hills responded by scoring the first three goals of the second half for a commanding 8-1 advantage before going on to win 9-3.

“That showed us that we were focused and playing with some purpose,” Taylor said of his team's second-half performance.

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