Prior to last Friday’s San Diego Section Open Division championship game at Mission Bay High School, Eastlake High School girls soccer coach Mark Coziahr said his team would treat it like any other game this season.
But it wasn’t like any other game this season. It was the most important game of the season.
It was the EHS program’s showcase event.
Coming off last year’s Division I championship, Eastlake was bidding for a rare championship double after moving up to the section’s top competition tier this season.
Only one team remained in their path to this year’s championship title — a Steele Canyon team that was making its second consecutive trip to the Open Division title match and third straight trip to the Open Division playoffs.
The matchup of girls soccer heavyweights was predictably high on drama, and tears readily flowed after the marathon match was finally over: tears of joy for Eastlake and tears of disappointment for Steele Canyon.
It was an emotion-wrought but magical send-off for 11 seniors on the Eastlake team.
“I’m so happy for the team,” explained Coziahr after the fourth-seeded Titans (19-5-3) prevailed 3-2 in the sixth round of the kicks-from-the-mark shootout tiebreaker. “It takes a lot of effort to go this far in the playoffs, to win a championship. It takes even more effort to stay there.
“To win back-to-back championships is an amazing feat. This is a special group of girls.”
Final countdown
In several ways, last Friday’s championship game did play out like many games for Eastlake this season. In fact, it was almost a mirror image of the Titans’ semifinal victory over West Hills on Feb. 27 — a game that also went into the overtime shootout tiebreaker.
The only difference is that last Friday’s game was scoreless through regulation and the sudden-victory overtime period, and that it took an extra round of spot kicks to settle the outcome.
Eastlake senior Gloriana Hinojosa and junior teammate Katherine Diaz led the parade of joyful tears after the Titans edged the seventh-seeded Cougars (12-7-6) in the tiebreaker.
Hinojosa made three saves in the shootout, including one that rebounded off the post to set up the game-winning kick by Diaz.
Summed up, it was like no other game the Titans had played before.
The tears flowed the longest for Hinojosa, one of the team’s toughest competitors and the player put on the spot, both literally and figuratively, for the team in the shootout tiebreaker.
A win or a loss depended on whether she could come up with the key save.
“I did my best — I worked hard for my teammates,” explained Hinojosa, her face still wet long after the game — and victory celebrations — had concluded. “I wanted to show my teammates how much I love them.
“It feels so good to repeat as champions and represent my school. I’m proud to be a Titan.”
After battling through 80 minutes of scoreless play, the teams battled through another 15 minutes of scoreless overtime before advancing to the dreaded KFM tiebreaker.
Steele Canyon went first and the Titans drew a huge break when Sealan Crotty missed wide on her shot. The Cougars then drew a huge break when Eastlake’s Jennifer Pham also deposited her shot wide of the net.
Both goalkeepers came up big in the second round of kicks as Hinojosa blocked a shot by Steele Canyon’s Karlee Folkesson and Cougar keeper Alyssa Warner stopped Eastlake’s Olivia Sekimoto.
The tension rose in the next round when Steele’s Amelia Hahn scored and Eastlake’s Krista Eberle missed to give the Cougars a 1-0 lead after three rounds.
Hinojosa proved to be the equalizer in the ensuing round when she blocked a shot by Steele’s Rhianna Speck to set up EHS teammate Makenzie Kimmel for the equalizing shot as the Titans evened the score 1-1 through four rounds.
Both teams scored in the fifth round — Elle Hastings for the Cougars and Marissa Garcia for Eastlake — to send the tiebreaker into a sudden-victory round.
When Hinojosa deflected a shot by Steele’s Olivia Zeldon off the post, it set up Diaz for the climactic game-winner. Diaz placed her shot just beyond the reach of a diving Warner, low to the left corner, for the match winner.
The Titans were Open Division champions —best of the section’s best.
“I was nervous but I thought about how far we had come through the season, about winning it for all the girls on the team, especially for Glo, our goalie,” Diaz said. “It means so much to everybody.”
After Diaz’s kick bulged twine, Warner sat in front of the net, obviously overcome with emotions of her own, while the Titans rushed to envelop Hinojosa in a celebratory embrace that quickly turned into a tearful pile-up of players on the pitch.
It could easily have been Steele Canyon players celebrating a victory. The Cougars dominated play through most of the first half and sizable stretches of the second half before the Titans, as in the semifinal game, began to turn the momentum to their side with a late rush.
Both teams enjoyed excellent scoring chances in the overtime period, though it remained scoreless.
Hinojosa made a clutch diving save to rob Steele’s Angelina Espinal of what appeared to be an almost certain goal in the second half. The Eastlake keeper also broke up numerous crosses into the box, at one point late in the first half picking the ball off the head of Crotty to prevent disaster.
Both goalkeepers were credited with four saves in regulation play.
The longer the game went, however, it seemed to play into Eastlake’s fortunes, Coziahr noted.
“We’re a deep team and we rely on our depth to be successful,” the EHS coach said. “We’re able to substitute and not lose anything on the field from our starters. We got the momentum back.”
The Titans appeared composed in the shootout tiebreaker — a facet of the game the team has been rigorously practicing in recent weeks in preparation for the playoffs.
In Hinojosa’s case, practice makes perfect.
“Glo is a big-time player and big-time players always play their best in big games,” Coziahr said.
