Triple Crowns
Gila Ridge soccer, Yuma Catholic soccer and Yuma High wrestling each win state titles Saturday
Saturday was a historic day for Yuma-area high school athletics. For the first time ever, multiple local teams won a state championship on the same day. At Williams Field High School in Gilbert, Gila Ridge boys soccer won its first-ever state title by beating Cortez 3-0 in the 4A championship and Yuma Catholic boys soccer captured its fourth straight ring with a 5-1 victory over Arizona College Prep in the 3A title game. Meanwhile, about 100 miles north of Gilbert in Prescott Valley, Yuma High won the Division III wrestling state championship in dramatic fashion — the first state title won by the Criminals in any sport since 1990.
GILBERT — Not quite three years ago, Corey Semler took over a Gila Ridge boys soccer program that hadn’t accomplished much of anything in seven all-time seasons.
The Hawks were an afterthought locally, let alone statewide.
Yet Semler believed not only that Gila Ridge could become a contender one day, but that it’d happen far sooner than later.
Now, the Hawks are state champions.
“This celebration was three years in the making,” Semler said after his team beat Cortez, 3-0, in the 4A state championship game Saturday afternoon at Williams Field High School in Gilbert. “All these seniors I had as sophomores, and I promised them that if they put the work in, we’d get there.
“These boys sacrificed everything for this, and I couldn’t be happier.”
The Hawks’ win — which gave Gila Ridge only its second-ever teamsport state championship (2014 boys cross-country being the other) — was a fairly convincing one.
Gila Ridge, the No. 5 seed, grabbed a 1-0 lead before third-seeded Cortez recorded its first shot and never at any point seemed in real danger. Sophomore forward Evis Fierro (11th minute), senior midfielder Arturo Ledezma (34th) and senior midfielder Ian Meza (64th) provided the scoring, and senior goalie Charlie Vazquez only had to make four saves.
Just one of Cortez’s shots on goal came during the flow of play; the other three were off of free kicks, two from distance.
The majority of the Hawks’ chances — particularly in the first half — came via set pieces, as well. Gila Ridge earned seven corners in the first 40 minutes (compared to two for Cortez), and just as many if not more throwins in the attacking third.
It was a throw-in that led to Gila Ridge’s first goal, and a corner kick that led to the second.
On the first, Ledezma threw it into the box to Fierro, who flick-headed it toward the far post to senior defender Jesus Robles, who let rip a shot that Cortez’s goalie was able to stop — but not hold on to. Fierro was there to clean up the rebound.
“I just went for it, had to finish it,” Fierro said.
“He never stops working,” Semler said of Fierro, whose goal was his 12th of the season. “He’s only a sophomore, so he’s only going to get better; he’s definitely the future of this program.”
Fierro nearly scored again in the 21st minute, but was denied from pointblank range.
About 13 minutes later, senior forward Esteban Franco sent a corner kick far post that Arturo got a head on in traffic and direct past the goalie — a defender was perfectly positioned on the goal line to prevent with his chest the shot from going in, but it was ruled to have crossed over the line.
Franco, Gila Ridge’s star forward with 39 goals entering the day, also assisted on Meza’s second-half goal.
“Today was a perfect example that we are a team,” Semler said. “(Franco) knew that Cortez was going to be man-marking him, and double-teaming him, trying to take him out of the game, and for him to understand that and remove himself that created space for everybody else.”
Franco, one of nine senior starters for the Hawks, has had as big of a hand as any player in Gila Ridge’s three-year run of success. His freshman year, the Hawks went 6-6 AIA and 3-5 locally — which was actually their second-best ever mark.
Then Semler came along the following season, and the Hawks went 9-3-1 AIA (5-2-1 locally) and qualified for state for the first time ever.
That was only the beginning.
“It hasn’t him me yet,” Franco said. “I think it’s going to hit me on the way home that we won a state championship.”
“I can’t put my words together,” said Meza, another one of the seniors. “We’ve been working so hard for the past four years and for it to finally come true, it just shows how hard we’ve worked and that all that work finally paid off.”
Meza admitted that four years ago, none of this would have seemed possible — “this program, it was one of the lowest in the city.”
Arturo is one senior who has not been with the program all four years; he moved from Mexico to Yuma three years ago, and admittedly had no idea what kind of soccer situation he was walking into.
“I came here to study, and they told me you can play soccer and I should try out,” he said.
Midway through his sophomore season, he realized: “OK, there’s awesome players here, we can win something.”
Semler and Franco both identified the specific point when things started to change for the program — when the Hawks won, 3-0, at San Luis two years ago to complete a season sweep of the Sidewinders, who they’d been winless against all-time entering the year.
“That’s when I knew I had a special group of kids,” Semler said.
Last year, the Hawks reached the 4A state semifinals.
And now, the top.