The Sports Informant

The dream season ended differently than players on the Folsom-Cordova United club lacrosse team had hoped for last weekend, as the varsity squad fell in the Final 4 semifinals to Petaluma on May 16, 14-4. The loss, thanks partly to a depleted roster, ended all championship hopes for the United, who ended up also losing the following day to Tomahawks Lacrosse in the bronze game, 12-5.

A sea of United teammates push the ball upfield during a playoff game. (Photo courtesy Tom Paniagua)

“Petaluma was very good and went on to win the whole thing on Sunday,” Folsom-Cordova coach Mike Messersmith said. “We lost a couple of key guys in the quarterfinal and just didn’t have the depth to run with them. It was disappointing, but they were very talented and deep.”

The key guys the United lost were attacker Blake Oliaro, who suffered an injury in the win over the CITY Outlaws the week prior, and Colton Ziebarth, who sat out because of concussions.

“I think we failed to beat Petaluma because we were down two of our starting players and because our game was at 4:30 p.m. in the middle of the day,” said Folsom-Cordova attacker Ryan Platt. “It was insanely hot on the turf field.”

The United hosted the Final 4 tournament in Folsom over the weekend, which was icing on the cake of a fantastic season that saw the local squad sail to heights it never had before.

“The Final 4 tourney was great,” Messersmith said. “We got nothing but praise for our efforts. We would love to be able to host it again, or even the state championships some time in the future.

“The season was a great success, despite what happened at the tourney. We had set our goal at winning a playoff game and advancing to the Final 4 this season and we met that goal. We’ve never had a team win more than 10 games in a season, and we were 0-1 in playoff games in our five years of varsity lacrosse. This season, we went 11-3 in the regular season and won a quarterfinal.”

For players like Platt, who grew in the sport through the program and will now move on with his senior year in the books, the season was a great memory.

“I thought we had an amazing season,” he said. “We went from not winning a single game freshman year to making it to the Final 4 our senior year, which is quite an achievement.”

Also see how the United got into the Final 4.