At least it wasn’t one goal.
The Grand Junction girls lacrosse team took its first lead of the afternoon with 8.7 seconds left in the first overtime period to overcome a four-goal deficit, then the Durango Demons kicked in an own-goal to lose 11-9 on Friday at DHS Stadium.
“Hey, as the girls pointed out, we didn’t lose by one,” said DHS head coach Jenni Darlow, nodding to the fact the Demons lost three of their first four games by a single score.
But emotionally, at least, this one looked even worse.
DHS built a 5-1 halftime lead on solid passing in transition that allowed Hannah Quick and teammates to exploit holes in the Tigers’ defense. Quick finished with three goals to lead the team, and Alyssa Montoya added two and an assist.
“They were not aware I was cutting in, and my teammates fed some perfect balls,” Quick said. “So they made it easy.”
Then, on their side of the field, defensive leader Deryn Candelaria and the Demons’ defense finally did what Darlow’s been looking for all season: Instead of checking, they played with body position and forced Grand Junction into mistakes.
“And they were making mistakes,” Darlow said. “They were, and I was so happy.”
After halftime, all of that changed.
The Tigers rattled off three goals in 30 seconds to pull within 5-4 with 21 minutes, 45 seconds remaining to play. Kacie Jay scored two of them to complete a hat trick on the first three Tigers’ goals on the day.
“We kept giving them the ball,” Darlow said. “Apparently we wanted to make it hard on ourselves, like, ‘Oh, a four-goal lead is too much.’”
Durango was able to reopen a four-goal lead with three consecutive goals of their own in the middle part of the half, but sloppy passes afterward kept them from putting the Tigers back on their heels.
“I think we maybe got a little lazy, a little overconfident and overall started to relax in our game,” Candelaria said.
“You can’t do that against a team like Grand Junction,” Quick said.
Grand Junction marched through the final 10 minutes of play with one goal after another, until Ashley Preuss tied it at 8-8 with 1:55 to go.
Not ready to let what looked like a sure win slip away, Montoya battled one-handed through a crowd, and scored the go-ahead goal with 46 seconds left, but the Demons’ defense allowed a back-door cut from Preuss to tie it back up at 9-all with 34 seconds left.
Jay, who led all scorers with five, scored for the first lead change of the day with 8.7 seconds left in the first overtime, then the Tigers scored one more assisted by a DHS check with 2:42 to go for the final margin.
“I told the girls ... ‘Yeah, I want you to be upset. You should be, but lets use that to motivate ourselves,” Darlow said.
With a rematch against the league-leading Tigers (7-1, 6-0 Mountain League) looming at 10 a.m. today at DHS Stadium, Candelaria said motivation shouldn’t be a problem for the Demons (3-6, 2-4 Mountain League).
“I want to win,” she said. “I want to beat them pretty good.”
jsojourner@durangoherald.com
