High school girls lacrosse: Bear River celebrates 5th straight 4A state title; Call sisters grateful to play role after missing last year’s final

A year ago during Bear River’s 4A state championship win, Brinlie and Mollie Call had to miss the game while on a family trip to Hawaii to celebrate their mom who was battling terminal brain cancer.

It was a sad game to miss, but Mollie Call said it was a trip of a lifetime for the whole family, and her teammates back home made the sisters feel loved and missed by sending videos throughout.

Fast forward a year, and not only did Mollie and Brinlie Call both get to play in Thursday’s 4A state championship game, but their mom is alive and still battling cancer and was able to watch the live stream from home.

After the game Bryton Call texted both her daughters, “you two were fantastic, congratulations my amazingly talented daughters.”

Senior Brinlie Call said doctors estimate her mom only has another month or so to live as the cancer is growing back aggressively, but Bear River lacrosse has been a positive escape for the family during the process, and Thursday’s 14-3 win over Provo in the 4A state championship was the cherry on top.

“It was beyond amazing. The way we were able to play as a team, the chemistry we had, it was great,” said Mollie Call, who scored four goals Thursday and finished the season with a team-leading 116 goals.

As for her mom being able to still watch her daughters play, Mollie Call said, “It really is a miracle. It was great.”

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On the field, to the surprise of no one, top-seeded Bear River dominated the 4A state title game at Zions Bank Stadium, running away from No. 2 seed Provo in the second half for a fifth straight state championship.

Bear River has won the 4A title every year since the UHSAA split lacrosse into 6A, 5A and 4A classifications.

Head coach Jeremy Webb said the wins and success are great but are secondary to the culture they’re trying to build in northern Utah.

“That’s the real success for me. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. It’s about the culture that we what we’ve created together. Not just coaches, but the coaches, the athletes, the administration, everything. That’s what it’s really about,” said Webb.

The win also ran Bear River’s winning straight to 79 straight dating back to a 7-5 loss to Corner Canyon early in the 2023 season.

Webb remembers that loss well. It was in March of 2023, and because of the extreme Utah winter he said there were piles of snow on the sidelines that had been plowed from the turf field. It was a cold, cold afternoon as well.

“We had four of our starters out in that game. I feel like we did pretty good, so I that’s all I remember,” said Webb.

The Bears haven’t lost a game since, but Provo certainly presented a challenged early Thursday.

When Courtney MacFarlane scored her second goal of the game at the 8:43 mark of the second quarter, it cut Bear River’s lead to 3-2 as the Bulldogs were finding success disrupting the Bears’ vaunted attack.

Methodically though, Bear River started to pull away. It scored three goals in the final five minutes of the first half — two by Ella Criddle — to take a 6-2 lead.

It then outscored Provo 5-1 in the third quarter and ultimately held the Bulldogs scoreless over the final 17 minutes of the game.

“I think the nerves kind of got to us the first quarter, but we really pulled it together, trusting each other, working as a team. That’s the main thing,” said Criddle, who finished with a game-high five goals.

Webb said that while the outcome often looks easy for his team, the work the players put in when no one is watching is the big reason for five straight championships.

“We did our work in the in the dark when no one was watching, and I told them champions do that because we’ll come out, we’ll show people what we’re about,” Webb said. “That’s what we did today.”