Warriors reach girls lacrosse playoffs

Fallbrook High School's girls lacrosse season ended May 26 with a loss to Sage Creek, but it was in the CIF Division II playoffs.

The playoff berth was the first in the history of Fallbrook High School girls lacrosse. "That's a big accomplishment," said Fallbrook High Coach Debbie Berg.

This is Berg's second season coaching the Warriors, although in 2020 the coronavirus shutdown limited the season to three games and approximately three weeks including practice.

The 2020-21 CIF seasons were compressed, so multi-sport athletes often had to choose a single sport. Fallbrook had 18 girls in the lacrosse program. "We had JV players. We did not have a JV team," Berg said.

Some of Fallbrook's less experienced players had seven-on-seven matches against the other school's actual junior varsity squad. "Nobody who played the JV games had any more than a year experience," Berg said.

Girls lacrosse involves 12 players on the field for each team, so the Warriors had six substitutes if everyone was healthy and present. "We had games when we didn't have more than one," Berg said.

The coronavirus outbreak also hampered the Warriors when two girls tested positive for COVID-19. Three games were cancelled while the Warriors were quarantined. Two of those were able to be made up during the final week of the regular season. "We played our last four games four days in a row," Berg said.

Those games were played May 18 through May 21. The Warriors were allowed to return to practice May 17 but were not allowed to practice during the two-week quarantine period. "We came into those games pretty rusty," Berg said.

A 12-3 victory May 20 at Vista was the only Fallbrook victory of those four games on consecutive days.

Sage Creek and Fallbrook are both Valley League teams for girls lacrosse, so the Warriors and Bobcats played each other twice prior to the playoff game. The April 13 game at Sage Creek was a 19-8 Bobcats victory. "It was really bad," Berg said. "The second time we made a lot of adjustments and we narrowed that down."

The Warriors lost the May 23 game in Fallbrook by a 12-10 margin. "We really improved from the first game to the second game," Berg said.

The playoff score was 20-4. "In the third game we were pretty outdone," Berg said.

The loss finalized Fallbrook's season record at 5-8. "It was a little shorter season than normal," Berg said.

The Warriors had a 3-3 record in Valley League play.

"I was pleasantly surprised about how we performed," Berg said.

"It was still a growing season," Berg said. "There's quite a bit of difference in skill level of teams, even in our league."

The 2021 team had only five seniors. "We should be quite a lot stronger next year," Berg said.

"I think we were all just pleased to be able to field what we fielded," Berg said. "We're going to need to build the program, build the numbers up so we can have a JV team next year. That's our goal."