Just 10 seconds into Saturday's South Torrance Tournament championship game, Palos Verdes looked up at the scoreboard and found itself losing to Santa Monica.

After a kick-save by goalkeeper Andrew Sakura, a couple of Palos Verdes players whiffed on the ball, allowing Santa Monica's Ricardo Martinez to move in for the goal.

For a team that has become used to come-from-behind victories recently, this was going to be yet another challenge.

But after scoring two comeback wins in the tournament on Friday, Palos Verdes (7-4-1) was unable to dig itself out of that early hole in a 3-1 loss to Santa Monica (11-0-1).

"That first minute was just a mess," Palos Verdes coach Bruce Myhre said. "We've giving up a lot of goals like that this season on simple plays that we should have made, but didn't."

The inability to pull off the comeback certainly wasn't from a lack of effort.

Palos Verdes played with the wind at its back in the first half and took advantage of it late.

The Sea Kings tied the game in the final minutes of the first half after freshman defender Matt Mardesich pounced on a throw-in and scored the first goal of his varsity career.

"The wind kind of put it in a good spot for me and Nick (Hardy) got in the way of my guy so I had a good look at the net," Mardesich said.

The comeback was short-lived, however, as Santa Monica midfielder Nico De La Rosa scored a minute into the second half and gave

Santa Monica a lead it would not relinquish.

Santa Monica, which won the tournament for the first time in 36 years, scored again late on a goal by midfielder Luis Zavala.

"We needed to defend better. We've been suspect all year on the backline but we give up some dumb goals," Sakura said.

Myhre attributed some of his team's defensive struggles in the tournament final to new faces in the lineup.

Junior midfielder Zach Petow was one of those new faces; Petow started for PV after not playing in the team's penalty-kick semifinal victory against Los Alamitos earlier Saturday.

"We wanted to switch things up a little bit and it didn't work out," Myhre said. "He's a good player but when you haven't played in a while and you go in there it doesn't always work out."

Regardless, for a team that is returning only three starters from last year's CIF championship team, just a trip to the final of a quality tournament is something to build on.

"You want to win, obviously," Myhre said. "We're taking our lumps now with a young team but it's going to pay off for us soon."