The Diablo Valley College lacrosse club won its second consecutive California Junior College Lacrosse Association championship title Saturday, Dec. 6, defeating the Santa Barbara City College Vaqueros 15-9.

The Vikings looked strong early on, shutting out the Vaqueros in the first quarter and taking a 2-0 lead.

In the second quarter, the Vaqueros managed to finally score, but it would not do much damage.

The Viking offense continued to compile goals as they led 7-3 at the end of the first half.

Although they had a promising lead entering the second half, the Vikings struggled to get anything going offensively in the third quarter.

SBCC, on the other hand, gained momentum, rallying to score four unanswered goals to tie the game at 7-7 with just over a minute left in the third quarter.

The Vaqueros grabbed their first lead of the game with just seconds remaining in the third quarter but it would be all DVC from there on out.

Just two minutes into the fourth quarter, midfielder Cameron Toy was able to score from far out to tie the game again at eight.

Toy’s goal provided a spark for the offense, as seconds later attacker Nick Bunnell scored to give the lead back to DVC.

SBCC would get few opportunities to regain the lead in the fourth quarter, the Viking defense forced some key turnovers and goal tender Caleb Pryle provided some great saves.

DVC scored a few more goals and control time of possession late in the game to secure the championship victory.

DVC Coach Dean Wallahan thought it was a big test for the Vikings, as they had not played SBCC prior to Saturday’s game.

“We wanted to work on being disciplined and playing team ball,” Wallahan said. “I think the third quarter got away from us a little bit, and hats off to Santa Barbara for coming out after halftime and putting a heck of a show on.”

Midfielder Akili Man felt as though the team’s mentality coming into the game was that they wanted to win it. Despite taking an early lead, Man said the team was able to feed off SBCC’s momentum to rally and pull off the victory.

“Just them getting pumped got us even more pumped,” Man said. “We just wanted to like get more goals, we wanted to shut them down. That’s what we were thinking the whole time.”

Midfielder Bradley Garcia explained what the team did to overcome their slow second-half start.

“I don’t know how we lost it (momentum) but we definitely had the heart to come back,” Garcia said. “It was do or die pretty much, we had to win.”