Girls soccer: CHS girls use win over Kenai Central to get into state tourney

SOLDOTNA — Like a savvy poker player, Colony goalie Katelyn Payne stared into the eyes of her opponent, searching for the slightest clue. Fifteen yards away, Kenai Central's Holly Perkins studied the net behind Payne intently.

Too intently.

Payne's intuitive diving save on Perkins' last-minute penalty shot helped Colony preserve a 2-1 victory and advance to the state soccer tournament with a win in the third-place game of the Northern Lights Conference Soccer Championships at Soldotna High School on Saturday morning.

“I was just focusing on her eyes and her hips to see where she was going to go,” Payne said following her dramatic stop. “Where they look is where they're going to go.”

Making the big save to help her team advance to state, Payne said, was “awesome.”

That fact that Payne would turn out to be the game's hero was fitting, as she'd helped Colony hold off a desperate second-half flurry from the Kardinals, who produced wave after wave of scoring chances after falling behind 2-1 in the opening half.

“When she has her 'A' game, she has her 'A' game,” Colony coach Lori Miner said of her sophomore keeper.

Colony opened the scoring 31 minutes into the game when sophomore Katie Gonski ripped a long shot from just outside the penalty box past Kenai keeper Lacie Wortham.

The Knights didn't waste any time putting a second goal in the net, scoring just two minutes later when junior Tara Garrod sent a perfect feed to freshman Jamie Krediet inside the box. Krediet took the pass facing away from the Kenai goal, calmly turned toward Wortham and finished left-footed into the corner of the net for what turned out to be the game-winner.

The Kardinals cut the lead to 2-1 when Kenai sophomore Casey Coupchiak fed a wide-open Perkins in front of the net, allowing the powerful Kenai striker to blast the ball past Payne.

Both teams had numerous chances in the second half, but Payne and Wortham — both sophomores — came through with clutch saves in net.

“Their goalie is phenomenal,” Miner said of Wortham's play.

In addition to the “nerve wracking” penalty kick, Miner and the Knights had to endure two other big scares late in the game.

First, Perkins ripped a shot that slipped through Payne's hands and trickled toward the goal, only to be cleared out at the last second by sophomore defender Shannon Heimerl. Just five minutes later, Payne stopped a shot by Kenai's Ashlyn Ross, but the ball appeared to slip free of her hands in the wet field conditions. Coupchiak kicked the ball free from Payne's hands and into the net, but the referee ruled that the Colony keeper had possession.

The win advanced the Knights into next week's state championships and helped to erase the memories of a tough 2-0 loss to Soldotna the day before in a game that Miner said the Knights probably should have won.

“We didn't finish. We should have walked off the winner in that game. But we've been telling our team, if we have a weak spot it's our inability to finish it,” she said.

But, Miner said, the ultimate goal of a conference tournament is to advance further into the postseason, and her team never lost sight of that goal.

“If you look at their arms, they all say 'score' on one side,” she said. “And 'state' on the other.”

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com