MATHER, Calif. – Junior Keira Miles netted seven goals while seniors Karly Okamoto and Zia Smith added five and four, respectively, as St. Francis rolled past Davis, 17-7, in the varsity nightcap of a Sierra Foothill League girls' lacrosse doubleheader at Mather Sports Complex Tuesday night.
The Troubadours close out their regular season with a 10-4 record, both overall and in league. The Blue Devils move to 9-5 overall and 9-4 in SFL play, with only an April 22 game against Rocklin remaining on their slate. The game could also impact the seeding in the second-annual Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs, as Davis and SF entered the week in third and fourth, respectively, in MaxPreps' Sac-Joaquin Section rankings.
Furthermore, Tuesday's game provided a venue for the Troubies to honor six graduating seniors: Okamoto, Z. Smith, Olivia Hamm, Cami Zucker, Chloe Tanner and Sofia Rabinovitz. All six seniors contributed significantly to the win. Hamm notched a goal plus team highs of four assists and three ground balls. Zucker heavily contributed to the Troubies' defensive and transition game throughout, while Tanner and Rabinovitz each posted key steals to cool Davis in its attacking third down the stretch.
St. Francis also managed a slight edge on the draw, controlling 15 to the Blue Devils' 13 – in contrast to the 10-7 deficit in the April 7 loss across the Yolo Causeway. Miles had six draw controls, with Z. Smith and Hamm each scooping up four.
After Davis' Katie McMullen drew first blood in the opening minute with one of her four goals, the Troubies responded with four straight in the opening quarter: Miles' eight-meter conversion to equalize in the second minute, then her go-ahead on a Hamm assist with 8:25 to go. Hamm then tallied back-to-back, hitting a second-chance goal in the fifth minute then drawing shooting space and burying the eight-meter chance in the sixth, extending the SF lead to 4-1.
The Blue Devils manage to keep pace with additional scoring down the stretch while Miles ran into some hard luck with shots caroming off the cage. But Okamoto netted goals off of her own ground balls in the eighth and 12th minutes: she scooped up the rebound of a Hamm shot and put it back in to boost the Troubie lead to 5-2. Then in the final seconds the frame, she stole a clearing attempt from DSHS goalkeeper Sakinah Chantit, took the ball straight to the house, and planted her shot just as Chantit returned to the goal circle.
Okamoto enjoyed a second rebound-and-putback combination as one of three St. Francis goals in the second quarter. Hamm assisted earlier in the stanza and Miles slashed through the critical scoring area with 49 seconds to go, helping maintain a 9-5 halftime lead.
The Troubies added four unanswered goals, including two by Okamoto, to stretch their lead to 13-5 in the third. Davis junior Olivia Ayson prevented a scoreless quarter for her team with a successful trip to the eight-meter arc, and McMullen did likewise to start the fourth, but that ended up being the last Blue Devil goals. Miles scored two more eight-meter goals and Okamoto connected with Z. Smith two more times to complete the win for the Troubies.
Impressively, Tuesday's finale marked the widest margin of victory for St. Francis against Davis in the recorded history of the series (2008 to present). The previous high was eight, when Katie Ku led the Troubies to a 14-6 win over the Blue Devils back on March 11, 2008.
The varsity win followed an 8-6 loss for St. Francis junior varsity, which arguably played its best game of the year in the 2025 season finale. Sophomore Lucia Shepard scored four goals, including three on long crease rolls, while goalkeeper Angela Miles posted 13 saves with five ground balls and two steals on the other end of the field.
However, perhaps St. Francis' highlight of the game belonged to freshman Madelyn Toledo, who scored her first career goal on what can only be described as an "accidental assist." On the Troubies' first possession coming out of a 3-1 halftime deficit, freshman Delaney McGahan sent a pass into her own CSA with no apparent target – that is, until Toledo scooped up the ball and immediately fired into the net to halve the deficit to a single goal.
Shepard equalized the contest at 3-3 with 6:24 in the third although Blue Devil Rosie Ostrem soon followed with a drive off a self-start to regain the lead at 4-3 exactly 45 seconds later. St. Francis never tied the game again, but managed to cut the deficit to one three more times, first on an eight-meter with 1:42 left in the third (5-4), then on Taylor Crotsley's drive from the 12-meter fan at 8:44 in the fourth (6-5), then again on another Shepard crease roll with 6:50 remaining in the game.
St. Francis now enters a 14-day hiatus from competition, mostly to accommodate the school's spring break. The Troubies will learn their fate in the CIF-SIS playoffs on April 25. The top three teams from the SFL, plus the top two from the Capital Valley Conference, and the next three at large will fill the eight-team bracket. The SJS tourney begins on Tuesday, April 29.
