Wasilla girls open region tourney with win

PALMER — Less than a week ago, the Wasilla Warriors closed their regular season with a 4-0 road win against Homer.

As Wasilla prepared for its rematch against the Mariners in the first round of the region tournament, Wasilla head coach Patrick O’Neill had a simple message for his players.

“Take the knowledge, what you learned about the team last week, but disregard the result,” O’Neill said. “Anything can happen.”

Disregard the results, but not the Mariners.

Wasilla used a key goal in the final minute of the first half and two more in the second to score a 4-1 win over the Mariners during the Northern Lights Conference Championships girls’ quarterfinals Thursday morning at Colony High School.

O’Neill said Homer played Wasilla, the defending NLC champions, tough, especially early in the match.

“They had a really smart game plan,” O’Neill said. “They played four back and had a sweeper behind them. They packed it in right from the beginning. It took us a while to break through.”

Senior Ally Hull gave the Warriors the lead during the 21st minute.

“We had to adjust our play a little bit,” O’Neill said. “We were trying to go long on them, but they had too many players back. We shortened up our feet, worked it around and tried to break them down. That’s really tough to defend for 80 minutes.”

O’Neill said the key goal for the Warriors came in the 39th minute. Late in the first half, Nicole Catlett worked the ball to Alexis Friesen, and Friesen ripped a low shot into the net. O’Neill said he felt that goal was kind of a back-breaker, and he thought Homer could have felt much better about things trailing just 1-0 at halftime, rather than by two goals.

Soldotna and Kenai have been the teams to beat from the NLC South in recent seasons, but this year Homer forced a three-way tie at the top of the South Division standings. A regular-season loss to Houston proved to be the tiebreaker — both SoHi and Kenai beat the Hawks this year — and the Mariners were pushed to the No. 3 seed to face Wasilla, the No. 2 seed from the NLC North. O’Neill said the Warriors certainly were not going to overlook Homer.

“They played well,” O’Neill said of Homer. “They’ve got a good coach. He’s got the program going in the right direction.”

Freshman Reese Sande added a pair of goals in the second half for Wasilla. In the 47th minute, Hull knocked a ball to the top of the box. Sande sent a hard strike to the back of the net to give Wasilla the 3-0 lead. In the 60th minute, Sande, from just outside the left corner of the box, blasted the ball in the upper shelf of the net through the hands of the Homer goalkeeper.

Late in the match, Andie Sonnen knocked in loose ball to put Homer on the scoreboard.

With the win, Wasilla moves ahead and will face Soldotna Friday at 11 a.m. in the NLC semifinals. SoHi advanced with a 2-0 win over Houston Thursday morning at Palmer High School. Houston was playing in the NLC tournament for the first time in school history.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.