SHORELINE - Sumner High’s theme this season: Unfinished business.
But now the score has been settled, and the warm-up sweatshirts with that theme etched on the back no longer serve a purpose. No more business is left to finish.
These Spartans are the Class 2A State Champions -- the first team to do so in school history.
“The business is completely finished,” said Sumner goalkeeper Jamie Lange after the top-ranked Spartans shut out Sehome 1-0 Saturday at Shoreline Stadium. “It’s done and it feels unbelievably great.”
The only score of the match came with five minutes left in the first half when Sumner’s leading goal-scorer Kaylie Rozell, who led the 2A South Puget Sound League with 33 goals during the regular season, passed across the middle from about the 6-yard-line to Kaitie Huff.
Huff dove, connected and scored. It was the only goal Sehome had allowed in the state playoffs.
With a defense led by Gonzaga-bound Sarah Carter, it was enough.
The Sumner defense hadn’t allowed a goal in 17 of its past 18 matches coming in. Sehome didn’t find any flaws in it, either, as the Spartans held on and recorded their 19th shutout.
“Every time the ball goes back there I have learned that they are just going to get it back out,” Rozell said. “I believe in them 100 percent.”
The Mariners came out aggressively in the second half and sent two shots at the goal in the first 50 seconds. But Lange got in the way and saved shots sent by Sehome’s Emily Webster and Hanna Tarleton.
Tarleton had another decent look in the 46th minute and sent a hard shot from left of the goal. But Carter positioned herself in the way and it careened off her head, ending the threat.
“They are good in the air and a lot of the balls we just couldn’t get to,” Tarleton said. “We just couldn’t get one in. They wouldn’t let anything through.”
“I have said this a lot this year, but Sarah is a Division-I athlete and the leader of this team. To have her at center-back controlling the whole field is extremely important,” said Sumner coach Robi Turley. “Then our goalkeeper, Jamie Lange, is stellar. Her size and ability make it really tough on teams to score.”
That defense allowed only three goals the entire season, while allowing Sumner to finish undefeated at 21-0 and earn its first state championship trophy in school history.
“You couldn’t get a better picture than the perfect season, undefeated, and the state championship,” Turley said. “It’s a great way to send out our seniors.”
Those seniors, including Rozell and Carter, know very well how different that picture can be. Despite reaching the state playoffs each of the past five years, it wasn’t until this season that the Spartans made it past the quarterfinals. Archbishop Murphy bounced them out of the playoffs with a 1-0 win last year and Sehome won 1-0 in 2010.
Sumner proclaimed this season would be the year they settle “unfinished business” and the team had sweatshirts made with that slogan etched on the back.
Well, it beat Archbishop Murphy 1-0 last Saturday in the quarterfinals. It beat Sehome 1-0 yesterday.
It’s settled.
“We finished business this year, that’s for sure,” Turley said. “We had a lot of alumni who have built this program up and now we have our first state championship. It has been incredible.”
University Prep 3, Seattle Christian 2: University Prep’s Ayana O’Neal scored the go-ahead goal in the 56th minute and the Pumas went on to win the Class 1A State Championship 3-2 against Seattle Christian on Saturday at Shoreline Stadium.
The state title was the first for the Pumas since 2004 and the third championship in school history.
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