West Boys' Player of the Year Ethan Pearson Aimed to Set Up His Teammates

Ethan Pearson was seemingly scoring at will early this season for Mountain Vista (Colo.), but as defenses started putting more attention on him, he realized it was time to take on a new role. As he shifted toward being more of a pass-first midfielder, the offense found new life.

The senior middie still contributed plenty of important goals, but his play freed up others to get more involved in the scoring and ultimately made Mountain Vista unstoppable.

Mountain Vista coach Matthew Plitnick said Pearson’s leadership and willingness to sacrifice for the team played as much a factor in the Golden Eagles’ state championship run as his individual ability to make things happen.

The Eagles avenged two of their three regular-season losses in the playoffs, going through the Nos. 1, 2 and 4 seeds to win their second Class 5A title in three years, and Pearson finished the season with a team-leading 79 points on 49 goals and 30 assists. He is the USA Lacrosse West Boys’ Player of the Year.

“He’s got the hardest shot I’ve seen in high school lacrosse the last 15 years, and being able to shoot with both hands, he’s unguardable,” Plitnick said. “He demands attention from the opposing defenses and frees up other players. His selflessness is what helped take us to the next level. I think he felt a lot of pressure beginning of the year, then took it off himself and let his teammates perform. He didn’t feel like he needed to be the main guy all the time, and that’s what propelled us. Being mature enough to realize that and work within our system, that was what was going to get us the results we wanted.”

Pearson said the light came on for him at halftime of a midseason game against ThunderRidge (Colo.) when Mountain Vista was leading just 5-2 and the offense had gotten off to a slow start. His coaches pulled him aside and told him it wasn’t his job to score anymore, but rather to be a leader and help his teammates.

The Eagles went on to win 19-2, and Pearson finished with five goals and one assist — but nine other players contributed to the scoring.

“Something just clicked,” said Pearson, who also had been involved in his school’s student leadership program since sophomore year. “The offense was moving slowly in the first half, and that was on me because I was trying to do too much. In the second half, I came out with the mentality I was going to make everyone around me better and I was going to be a pass-first kind of player.”

Aside from that performance, Pearson’s biggest games had been earlier in the season. He scored five goals in three straight games against Poway (Calif.), Santa Fe Christian (Calif.) and Denver East (Colo.) and had at least two assists in each of those matchups, too.

Pearson didn’t score as much in the playoffs, but his go-ahead second goal in the state championship game against Valor Christian sparked a run in the second half, and the Eagles went on to a 10-8 win. They had trailed 4-1, but Pearson put them up 5-4 in the third quarter as part of a seven-goal scoring spree.

“I think defenses were still pretty aware of me, but they also started to realize we had so many weapons on offense they had to switch things up,” Pearson said. “At the beginning of the season, I was getting locked up a lot, and people around me didn’t know what to do, but we were able to work through it and everyone stepped up around me — big props to my teammates.”

Plitnick said those early games in California “put everyone on notice” that Pearson was a player to be reckoned with, but it was difficult to stop him because of how physically dominant he was.

Pearson had a naturally hard shot already but had put in a lot of time in the weight room to grow even stronger. He was 155 pounds coming into the program as a freshman and now is around 185 pounds, which will help him be ready for the rigors of college lacrosse as he heads to Towson in the fall.

“I spent a lot of time in the weight room, and a lot of credit goes to our amazing strength coach, Shane Miller, because he helped the entire team,” Pearson said. “We were in the weight room three times a week, knowing we were working hard, staying focused. There was no messing around. I already had a naturally hard shot, but that took it to the next level, and that was one of my goals was just to be physically and mentally stronger this year because I know it will be even more challenging next year.”

That work ethic also showed on the practice fields. Plitnick said Pearson would spend so much time doing extra shooting drills, the staff had to tell him to stop at certain points.

“We would tell him, ‘You’re doing everything right, but we need to get everyone else somewhere near your level,’” Plitnick said.

And as the season went along, they did. Riley Jenkins was someone who benefited most from defenses putting more attention on Pearson. He finished with 33 goals and 32 assists, and Plitnick said Pearson helped free him up “to have a phenomenal year.”

Pearson said the most important thing was finishing with the title. He was part of the state title team in 2021 as a sophomore and wanted nothing more than to go out in the same way as the seniors did that year.

Mountain Vista showed early signs of being a championship-caliber team in the fall, he said, and it was in those first practices the Eagles felt they could win it all. Three hiccups during the regular season might have created some doubt, but they picked it back up when it mattered most.

“We were talking about it from beginning of fall, our first workout, because we wanted to be able to say, ‘This is the team that did it,’” Pearson said. “That carried through the fall and winter and beginning of spring, but then we had a low point and energy went down. It was just about staying calm, learning from the small things and that brought us together, brought our confidence back. Going into the playoffs, we knew we were going to win.”