St. Francis Lacrosse Team Launches Inaugural Season

Expectations are high for the inaugural season of St. Francis High School's lacrosse team, which began Tuesday with a match-up against Viewpoint.

This spring, the Golden Knights will play an independent league schedule with the ultimate goal of becoming part of the Mission League by the beginning of next school year’s spring sports season, St. Francis representative Andrew Burghdorf told Patch via e-mail. 

The team will draw heavily from the freshmen and sophomore class, many of whom have played in local youth leagues. Meanwhile, junior Patrick McGoldrick is expected to shoulder much of the offensive load, Burghdorf said.

The team will be lead by Head Coach Geoff Watson, a 2000 Harvard graduate. While at Harvard, Watson was one of the lacrosse team's leading scorers. He also teaches English and Spanish at St. Francis.

"St. Francis has a long tradition of producing exceptional scholar-athletes," Watson said in a media release. "I'm quite confident that we'll be able to field a hard-working team and build a solid foundation for the program. The future is quite bright for St. Francis Lacrosse."

St. Francis will also host top high school lacrosse teams from across California for a small invitational March 15-16. The invitational schedule is as follows:

Friday, March 15

5 p.m. — St. Francis vs. Chadwick
7 p.m. — Torrey Pines vs. St Ignatius

Saturday, March 16

2 p.m. — St Ignatius vs. Coronado
4 p.m. — De La Salle vs. Coronado