Prep soccer: Morgan Weaver’s not enough to push Curtis past Issaquah in 3-2 quarterfinal loss
Frank Hankel sighed as he stopped just before walking off the rain-drenched field Saturday at Curtis High School.
“We had it,” the girls soccer coach said.
Just not long enough.
Curtis’ season ended in the 4A state quarterfinals with a 3-2 loss against visiting Issaquah in a match in which senior forward Morgan Weaver scored her 35th goal of the season to give the Vikings the lead in the second half.
Issaquah (14-2-2) tied the match at 2-2 on Mariah Van Halm’s shot into the upper left corner of the goal in the 59th minute and got the winner in the 66th on Claudia Longo’s corner kick.
“I told the girls at halftime that the only team that can beat us is ourselves,” Hankel said. “And that’s what happened, honestly. We went up 2-1 and we stopped playing.
“Ideally, when you go up you want to bury a team. A team as good as this, you don’t want to park the bus so to speak. You want to keep going at them. It came down to two things: Will and execution — and they got us on the second, unfortunately.”
But Curtis (16-3-0) didn’t go easy. Weaver made one last ditch effort in the final minutes, stumbling through a slide tackle for a through ball on the left side of the field. She regrouped and sent a cross to Sariah Keister in front of the goal.
Issaquah’s goalkeeper dove and deflected it, but the ball continued toward the open goal with Keister and Issaquah’s sophomore defender Kirstie Johnson sprinting for it. Johnson kicked it over the net just before it nestled into the goal.
“That was phenomenal,” Issaquah coach Tom Bunnell said.
Weaver said she thought it went in.
“I saw the ball coming my way and I was like, “I’m not going to stop. It’s the last couple of minutes, I need to finish this game as strong as I can,’ ” Weaver said. “I saw Sariah and I was like, ‘I know she’ll be there for me and I’m going to make the run for her.’ And she was there. It just didn’t get in.”
Issaquah advances to play Camas in the state semifinals at 8 p.m. Friday at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup. It’s the Eagles’ eighth trip to the state semifinals since 2004.
Keister scored Curtis’ first goal of the match to tie it in the 20th minute and Weaver, a Washington State University commit, put Curtis ahead eight minutes after halftime with her team-best 35th goal (in 19 matches) of the season. She scored four goals in two separate matches.
But then Issaquah rallied, just like Curtis did to win in penalty kicks in each of its past two matches.
“We knew they were good, we’ve seen them play a couple times and we knew their strengths and that they don’t have a lot of weaknesses,” Bunnell said. “So we just said, ‘You know what, it’s going to be a fight the whole time – up down, whatever.’ We were down, but we just had to keep fighting. The goals would come and they believed it.”
CLASS 4A
Gonzaga Prep 2, Bellarmine Prep 0: Larkin Russell scored the first of her two goals with four minutes until halftime and gave the Bullpups all the momentum they needed to end the Lions’ season in the 4A state quarterfinals.
The Lions turned on the attack from there, but Larkin added one more goal in the 62nd.
“Things really changed when they got that goal before halftime,” Waters said.
He said Bellarmine’s best scoring chance came with about five minutes remaining in the match, but a shot hit off the post.
It was the Lions’ first trip to the state playoffs since its streak of nine consecutive appearances ended following a loss in the 2011 state title match against Skyline.
“It’s always tough to lose in the quarterfinals,” Waters said. “But to not only make it back to state, but also the quarterfinals is pretty special.”
CLASS 3A
Arlington 1, Sumner 0: The Spartans dominated this match.
Except on the scoreboard.
Nearly everything they sent at the goal was either directly to Arlington’s goalkeeper or hard off the crossbar, while the Eagles’ cashed in on one of their few looks on Danielle Barber’s goal in the 24th minute to advance to the 3A state quarterfinals and end Sumner’s season.
“I’ve been on both ends of this,” Sumner coach Robi Turley said. “That’s just the game of soccer. You can dominate matches but still not get the ball into the back of the net, while they get one good opportunity and they make the most of it.”
Sumner (17-3-0) had two shots in the first 17 minutes careen hard off the crossbar. First Sam Larberg in the fifth minute, then Megan McDonald in the 17th.
Arlington goalkeeper Kat Sanchez had three crucial second-half saves. She snatched a shot from Hannah Rowen in the 42nd, Jordan Thompson’s hard header off a corner kick in the 68th.
Sanchez fell into a save — literally — in the 55th when the rain-drenched ball slipped out of her grasp while she was on the ground. Larberg quickly struck it, but it was right into Sanchez, who was still lying down in front of the goal.
Sumner won the 3A South Puget Sound League title and won its first 3A state playoff game last week since moving up to 4A. The Spartans won back-to-back 2A titles in 2012-2013 and lost to Seattle Prep in the first round of the 3A state playoffs last season.
“The only team that is ever happy is the state champion, but this team far surpassed where I thought we would be,” Turley said. “This team lost six college players slash returned four varsity starters. To make it to the Elite 8 with that? That’s pretty awesome. That’s pretty special.”
Edmonds-Woodway 2, Central Kitsap 1: The Cougars were just four minutes from overtime.
But Gaby Chappell’s shot found the back of the net in the 76th minute to send Central Kitsap home and the Warriors to the 3A state semifinals to face Seattle Prep at 4 p.m. Friday at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup.
Central Kitsap, the 3A Narrows League champion, was coming off only its second state playoff victory in school history when it beat Marysville-Pilchuck last week. It tied the match in the 20th minute after EW’s Ashleigh Fonsen had scored two minutes earlier.
CLASS 2A
Squalicum 6, Black Hills 0: The Wolves weren’t able to continue their best run in school history, losing to the Storm in the 2A state quarterfinals at Civic Stadium in Bellingham.
Squalicum’s Rachel Dorr scored a goal in the 60th minute and assisted on two others. Squalicum led 2-0 at halftime before striking for four second-half goals, and heads to the state semifinals for the fourth consecutive year.
WATER POLO
Curtis 9, Bellevue 7 (2 OT): JJ Spoja scored the final two goals for the Vikings in the final two minutes of the second overtime to lift Curtis past Bellevue for the state boys water polo title on Saturday at the Curtis Aquatic Center.
Curtis’ Sam Abbott was named the tournament most valuable player, with Andrew Gronlund earning the MVP goalie and Curtis coach Dennis Piccolotto earning coach of the year.
Boys water polo is not a sanctioned sport through the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association.
This story was originally published November 14, 2015 at 11:34 PM with the headline "Prep soccer: Morgan Weaver’s not enough to push Curtis past Issaquah in 3-2 quarterfinal loss."