Unlucky sun — Puyallup falls in 4A state championship soccer game Saturday night
Were it hockey, Alexis Cruz-Hernandez likely would have been rubbing some metal. The post and crossbar are much more difficult to reach for a keeper on a soccer goal.
Nevertheless, the crossbar and right post at Sparks Stadium became the Puyallup goalie’s best friends for a short time during the second half of the Vikings 4A state championship game against Skyline on Saturday evening. Over a five-minute stretch Spartans banged shots off both of those parts of the frame, keeping the title game scoreless as the championship headed into the final 20 minutes of regulation.
The sun and shadows weren’t as friendly.
Skyline junior midfielder Colin McKenna used that sun hanging low in the sky as an aid in the 72nd minute, turning a long free kick into the first goal of an eventual 2-0 Spartans victory that handed their coach Don Brayman his first boys title – and second of the school year.
The Skyline girls, who Brayman also coaches, won the title back in the fall.
“I feel bad for their goalie,” Brayman said. “Colin is very intelligent. He saw the ball was lined up with the sun. Once he hit it, I don’t think the kid could even see it. It went over the defender and under the goalie.”
Puyallup coach Matt White saw it a little differently.
“Goalie mistake,” White said. “But that kid got us here. He’s allowed to make a mistake.”
Just a night earlier, Cruz-Hernandez made the big save during the Vikings third straight shootout in the state playoffs that propelled Puyallup into the final on Saturday. And over the first 71 minutes against Skyline, the sophomore added to his stellar resume with three point-blank saves.
“I felt like we dominated play,” Brayman said. “We were looking around at each other like, why won’t the ball go in?”
When it finally did, it was on a McKenna try from some 45 yards out into the sun.
“I couldn’t even tell what happened,” McKenna said. “I had turned around, but the next thing you know it was in the back of the net. It was pretty amazing, man.”
Braden Ferreira, who scored a goal in Skyline’s semifinal victory over Tahoma on Friday, then added some insurance in the final three minutes. Ferreira was pressing forward at the top of the goal box as Puyallup tried to clear the ball.
Instead, the clearing kick went off the side of a foot and right to Ferreira standing alone. He took a dribble toward the center of the pitch and drove a ball from right to the left corner of the net by Cruz-Hernandez for the final score.
The Vikings pressed hard as time wound down, getting a chance at two different corner kicks, but never seriously threatened the goal. Puyallup’s best “chances” came much earlier.
The Vikings got the ball on the ground and at the feet of their own guys at the six-yard box twice during an otherwise uneventful first half. But on both occasions, they were unable to make good contact and the opportunities went for naught.
Neither team generated many scoring pushes over the first 40 minutes, actually. Though the Spartans pushed forward at every opportunity, Puyallup’s defense closed down and cleared the ball.
Skyline’s Eli Jason hit the crossbar from distance in the 54th minute. Another long bomb came from left to hit the right post four minutes later, at which point a fourth consecutive overtime and/or shootout for the Vikings in these state playoffs started to loom as a possibility.
Instead, McKenna and the sun intervened for a title.