The California Redwoods underwent a youth movement during the 2025 season. The team didn’t have to endure a rebuild, however; six first-year players made immediate impacts and helped the team advance to the semifinals of the PLL playoffs.
After victories in four consecutive games, the run stopped there with a 12-7 loss to the Denver Outlaws.
At the postgame press conference, co-captain Brian Tevlin made a strong proclamation.
“We’re going to be back next year,” Tevlin said. “We’re going to be better next year. We’re going to be more mature. Hopefully, that shows when we’re eventually back in this situation and we have our best stuff instead of our worst stuff.”
Josh Balcarcel, one of the rookies, was crushed by the result and didn’t rewatch the game for a few days, but he grew curious. He yearned to understand what went wrong, and revisiting the game taught several lessons he could learn from.
Less than one year later, the Redwoods made it back to the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. Once again, they’ll take on the Outlaws, this time in the quarterfinals this Saturday (6 p.m. ET; ESPN+). Players like Balcarcel, Aidan Danenza, Andrew McAdorey and Cole Kastner are no longer rookies, and they plan to apply what they learned from falling short in 2025.
“The only way to feel comfortable in those games is to get the experience,” McAdorey said. “I definitely think that experience helped us just from being there, in the moment, playing those games, understanding what we need to do better. It’s only a valuable experience, when looking at a loss, if you learn from it.”
The Redwoods stormed into the 2025 playoffs thanks to a three-game winning streak to end the regular season. It was an emotional run where each contest was decided by a single goal and the team needed some late-game magic to secure victory.
California kept the good times rolling in the quarterfinals in Minneapolis with a second-half come-from-behind win over the Carolina Chaos. That earned it a third matchup against the top-seeded Outlaws.
Players tried to keep the gameday preparation as normal as possible, but Balcarcel admitted he was stressed. While a number of his teammates had played in Final Fours in college, the pinnacle of that level in front of tens of thousands of fans, Balcarcel had never gotten past the first round of the tournament.
Now, against the best of the best, he didn’t want to be the reason the Redwoods weren’t moving forward.
“It’s the first time in a playoff setting in the PLL with highly talented players, a group of people who had been ‘clutch players’ in different scenarios throughout their careers,” Balcarcel said. “It was just super nerve-wracking. My mindset was ‘don’t mess up,’ which I think isn’t really the mindset that you should be having, especially in playoff games, because you want to be comfortable. You want to be calm because that’s when you’re at your best and you’re not thinking too much.”
Balcarcel may have been nervous, but the Redwoods as a whole came out of the gates fast against the Outlaws. Chris Fake opened the scoring with a two-pointer, his only goal of the year. The confidence was flowing; Balcarcel said any time a defender scores, it’s a juice goal.
McAdorey scored off a Chris Kavanagh assist, and Dylan Molloy scored with just under two minutes remaining in the first quarter to give California a 4-1 lead.
The Redwoods knew Denver would keep fighting, but the Outlaws scored momentum-shifting goals. In the first quarter, Jared Bernhardt scored with 15 seconds remaining, and Pat Kavanagh scored a buzzer-beater to cut the deficit to one. As the teams traded goals in the second quarter, the Redwoods appeared poised to head into halftime up 6-5 only for Dalton Young to even the score with three seconds remaining.
Kastner said it was frustrating that two seconds could ruin 30 or 50 seconds of great defense, but there was a trend. While Kavanagh scored with the help of a pick, Bernhardt’s and Young’s goals came on isolation dodges that didn’t draw any help.
“I think part of the learning between this year and last year, and definitely that game in particular, was no one’s on an island truly ever on our defense,” he said. “You always have support and help behind you. We’re going to be aggressive coming to help. That’s just the way we play. It’s how we thrive.
“Ideally, shot clock’s ticking down, we’re getting below seven, six seconds, and you’re ready to fly out and help whoever’s on ball to make sure there’s no last-second goal coming there, preventing those types of blows. That’s just such a momentum-shifting play for an offense.”
While closing out quarters was a first-half issue, a stalled-out offense hindered the team’s chances at success in the second half.
California was shut out in the third quarter while committing seven turnovers and attempting just three shots. The fourth quarter wasn’t much better, with only one goal on eight shots with three turnovers.
Overall, from Molloy’s second goal in the second quarter to Kavanagh’s lone goal in the fourth quarter, the Redwoods went nearly 21 minutes without a score. The Outlaws scored three goals in the third quarter to take the lead and another three in the fourth quarter to ice the victory.
McAdorey tipped his hat to Denver’s defense, as well as goalie Logan McNaney, but some of the problems on offense were also self-inflicted.
“If we could play fast and draw a slide and then move it to the adjacent or hit a skip pass for a step-down shot, that’s good lacrosse,” Balcarcel said. “We kind of went away from that, and we just weren’t on the same page. We just weren’t moving efficiently as we usually do.”
That issue hasn’t completely gone away in 2026, but the Redwoods have made it a point of emphasis to rebound more quickly than they did in the 2025 semifinals.
“Whether it’s communication, not shooting the ball well, guys being disorganized, regardless of what it is … I thought, as a group, we do a really good job of getting back on the same page,” Danenza said. “It’s been one of our important things we’ve been honing in on, especially the last four or five weeks in the season because we don’t want that to happen again.”
“Playing a team [like] Denver, you really can’t afford to do that,” Danenza added. “They’re going to take advantage of it.”
The teams have also seen a lot of each other and know each other so well. Saturday’s quarterfinal will not only be the third time the Redwoods have faced the Outlaws this year; it will also be their second consecutive game against Denver.
The Redwoods beat the Outlaws two weeks ago in the regular-season finale in Philadelphia. Denver will look a bit different this week, though. The team already announced Bernhardt and Kavanagh will return after missing the last game due to injuries. The Outlaws also should be healthier on the back end after sitting their top three close defensemen in the previous matchup.
With a wealth of talent on both rosters, Kastner said the margin of error is incredibly thin. He said better communication and not hesitating will help California limit mistakes.
On the flip side, Danenza said it’s imperative that they punish the Outlaws for even the smallest errors.
“What I learned, personally, is that you’ve got to be alright with the game of runs, and it’s really important to capitalize on another team’s mistake, whether that’s a turnover or guys not being in the right position just in all facets of the game,” Danenza said. “Guys are going to make mistakes on both ends. I think it’s important as a group that we can find those little moments and take advantage of them, [such as] picking the ball up quick off the whistle. Little things like that go a long way.”
Arguably the biggest takeaway, though, was that they needed to be mentally stronger and more poised. Balcarcel, specifically, said he felt more confident as a second-year player, which he expects to be a calming force this time around.
“Allowing yourself to play free-flowingly and letting the muscle memory take over is the biggest thing,” Balcarcel said. “When you let your mind race a little too much, and you’re thinking too much, then you start to hesitate, and you start to doubt certain plays or certain shot attempts or pass attempts. Then it just starts to go in a downward spiral. If we can just rely on our team chemistry on both sides of the ball and rely on muscle memory, I think that’s the biggest key.”
It’s a sentiment McAdorey has preached to his teammates entering Saturday’s game.
“The biggest thing is that you don’t want to make the moment bigger than it actually is,” McAdorey said. “At the end of the day, it is still a lacrosse game. Obviously, everyone knows when it comes to the playoffs, there’s a lot on the line. You don’t want to overplay it and overtalk it up.”
For the first-timers, the semifinal game against the Outlaws in 2025 was a blur. One minute they stepped onto the field for warmups, and after blinking, their season was over. The team has talked throughout the 2026 season about being where their feet are.
Kastner said he plans to soak in the moment more this time around, especially with an energized crowd expected in Minneapolis.
“It’s one of the most amazing experiences ever to get to do this because everything else in the world is on pause for those two and a half hours you’re playing,” Kastner said. “You get off on the sideline and these kids want autographs and everything, and you get to have an experience that so many people may never get to have. It’s just truly a blessing to still be playing.”
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