The Woodlands suffers gut-wrenching loss in 2nd overtime

AUSTIN — For the second consecutive day, The Woodlands was tasked with playing past regulation.

After 80 minutes, the Lady Highlanders and Pflugerville Hendrickson were tied at 1 in the Class 6A Region II final and headed to overtime.

In the seventh minute of the first overtime, Kate McCullough netted what appeared to be the gamewinner for the Highlanders, but the Hawks’ Dalton Fish scored in the final seconds.

The Hawks got the go-ahead goal midway through the second overtime and this time, the Lady Highlanders couldn’t answer. Hendrickson won 3-2 on Saturday at Kelly Reeves Athletic Complex, advancing to the state tournament for the first time in school history.

“Obviously, we are disappointed, but I couldn’t have asked for anything more from them than what they did,” The Woodlands coach Dina Graves said.

Hendrickson joins Keller, Tompkins and Leander Vandergrift in next Friday’s state semifinals at Georgetown’s Birkelbach Field.

The two semifinal winners will play at 4 p.m. Saturday for the title.

“I’m so proud of these kids,” Hendrickson coach Rennie Rebe said. “They played incredible and worked so hard. You could see all these shifts in the game, and the kids just didn’t give up.”

Rebe added that Fish’s overtime goal gave the Hawks a much-needed boost heading into the final 10 minutes of extra time.

“That helped us a lot,” she said. “The kids started to believe that we could win this. The Woodlands had us on our heels a little bit at that point. It was just huge.”

The effects of Fish’s goal were twofold. While it bolstered the morale of the Hawks, it was a gut punch to the Lady Highlanders, who were forced to play 200 minutes of soccer in just 24 hours.

“Going into two overtime games, in back-toback games — not that I am surprised we lasted as long as we did, but we were playing against a team that didn’t have to do that,” Graves said. “ WALLER 2, WACO 1

A goal less than a minute into the second half gave the Lions life against the Bulldogs, but Waller scored twice in the first 40 minutes and made that lead hold up on its way to a victory in the Class 5A Region III boys final at Turner Stadium.

Waller joins Wichita Falls, Frisco Wakeland and Brownsville Lopez in the semifinals, which will be Thursday at Birkelbach Field in Georgetown. The two winners meet at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.