Gianluca Richmond had all the confidence in the world. As he and his Piedmont High School boys lacrosse teammates got ready to start overtime against Las Lomas in a North Coast Section Division 2 playoff game at Witter Field on May 5, Richmond sought out Conner Fredericks.
“He turned to me and he said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be open. Give me the ball and I’m going to score,’” Fredericks said. “I trusted him.”
Indeed, the trust was founded. Fredericks won the draw and then hit Richmond for the game-winning goal in 12-11 victory. Sixth-seeded Piedmont advances to the second round on May 7 at No. 3 Miramonte (7 p.m.).
“Hey, if you’re coming down with the ball, I’m going to cheat and I’m going to be wide open,” Richmond said he told Fredericks.
Said Fredericks, “We had done the same thing first quarter and I knew he would put that in.”
That came with three minutes, 58 seconds to go in the first period as Piedmont (and Fredericks) came out hot, taking a 6-1 lead. Fredericks scored the first two goals before Sameer Raj got one back for the Knights. Then came the Fredericks-to-Richmond goal, followed by goals from Ryan Graham, Timmy Kalamas, and another from Richmond. Things were looking easy-peasy.
However, this was a playoff match and Las Lomas began to work its way back into the game. It was 8-4 at halftime and then the Knights outscored the Highlanders 4-1 in the third quarter. Suddenly, it was 9-8.
“I think there was a little bit of underestimation of this other team,” Fredericks said. “After the first few goals, we were thinking we would be able to score when we want and then we (were) kind of struck with the realization that we’re going to have to dig deep for this game because they’re not going to roll over. The opposition did a great job coming back and really bringing up the heat. I think we did a great job of matching that after not a great third quarter.”
Said Piedmont coach Andy Kittler, “We were moving the ball well. I thought we were playing well on both sides of the ball. And we kind of just let them back into it and we took our foot off the gas. We started losing some of the ground ball battles. Once that starts happening, momentum shifted and they did a great job of just chipping away, chipping away.
“In the end, I was proud of the effort down the stretch and we got the win.”
Mason Grant, Miles McGlynn, and Andrew Scheg all played well for Las Lomas, creating the offense needed to fuel the comeback. Grant, McGlynn and Raj each scored three goals with Raj adding an assist. Scheg finished with two goals.
Fredericks scored his fifth goal of the game with 4:05 to go to put the Highlanders up, 11-10. They were almost able to hold on in regulation, but Raj scored with 28.5 seconds remaining to force overtime.
Fredericks added two assists. Kalamas had three goals and an assist while Richmond also had three goals. Luke McAulliffe played most of the game in goal and had 10 saves. Deniz Radzik played the third quarter and had two saves.
Arjun Vaithara had 10 saves for Las Lomas.
Piedmont recorded a 6-3 win over Miramonte back on March 3 at Witter Field. But this will be a different Matadors team as they were missing a couple of players due to injury back then. Miramonte finished 10-8 on the season and took second in the Diablo Athletic League. The Matadors beat Sonoma Valley 16-5 in their opening round win.
“We expect them to be quite a bit more tough,” Kittler said. “They are a well-coached team. They had a couple of guys come back and they’re playing really well down the stretch of the season. We’re expecting a very difficult game.”
All photos by Damin Esper.