The Mount Si Wildcat girls soccer season ended in heartbreaking fashion at Highline Stadium in Burien, as the team fell to Kennedy 2-1 on Saturday, Nov. 15.
Mount Si trailed 1-0 at halftime, but got a Nikki Stanton goal to tie things up in the second half, before the Lancers scored the game winner soon after.
The Wildcats ended their with a record of 10-4-4.
The Mount Si team has seen much drama this season. Big saves, and an even bigger goal, helped the Wildcats win two close games at the end of the season to take the Kingco title, and last Thursday, Nov. 13, after a two-week layoff made possible by winning the league title and extended by the flooding in the Valley, Mount Si once again injected a little drama into the proceedings.
Brittany Conway scored a pair of goals in the last 10 minutes of regulation to lift Mount Si to an unbelievable 2-1 win in a game that their opponent, the Bonney Lake Panthers, dominated for much of the contest.
The win in the first round of the WIAA playoffs for Mount Si eliminated the previously unbeaten Panther team, which finished the year at 15-1-2.
“That was one of the most dramatic finishes I’ve seen and coached in a long time,” said an overjoyed Mount Si coach Darren Brown.
The Panthers came out and quickly took control of the match, taking advantage of solid defense and mistakes from the Wildcats offensively.
However, thanks to Mount Si’s defense, Bonney Lake wasn’t able to get a goal on the board. This would prove critical later on, since the Panthers had at least a couple of great chances to score in the first half.
The Panthers’ strong play finally bore some fruit in the 57th minute, thanks to a name that you will be hearing about for some time to come on the high school soccer scene. Sophomore Savanna Moorehouse, who came into the game with 25 goals and whose goal Nov. 8 against Columbia River put the Panthers into the game last Thursday with Mount Si, scored her 26th of the season on a second effort.
Off a mistake from the Wildcats, Moorehouse broke in all alone and fired a shot that was stopped nicely by Mount Si goalie Marika Loudenback, but the ball rolled back out to the sophomore phenom and she connected on the second chance.
The score held steady until the 71st minute, when Conway got hold of the ball and fired it on the ground toward the net. It went in past Bonney Lake goalie Rendi Johnson, who likely didn’t see it go past her.
“It was on a corner kick and it was ricocheting and everything, so I was just there, took a cut, and I think the defenders thought the keeper had it,” Conway said.
With the game tied 1-1 and the Wildcats having been sparked by the first Conway tally, the contest was destined for overtime when with about a minute left, Conway took a feed from Nikki Stanton, and in the middle of heavy traffic lasered it into the net past Johnson to give Mount Si the lead.
“All Nikki right there. She found me and then I just tapped it in,” Conway said.
“I knew there was about one minute left in the game and I had to do something, so I saw the ball and I ran on it. Jordyn (Wilson) gave a great ball, and I just crossed it to Britt,” Stanton said.
Wildcat players and fans were ecstatic, but it was not yet done. Bonney Lake had one last rush, and they got one last solid scoring chance off, but Loudenback made another great save. The defense cleared the ball away from the zone, and the whistle sounded.
It was a dramatic final victory before the Nov. 15 loss to Kennedy.
The Wildcats’ last playoff run, in 2006, also ended at Kennedy, also by a 2-1 score.
