YC girls fall in final to Casteel
GILBERT — The 15-second, mid-sentence pause Jesus Quintana took to compose himself told it all.
The disappointment was evident. Even though the majority of outsiders probably viewed Yuma Catholic’s girls soccer team as a fairly considerable underdog entering Saturday’s 4A state championship game against Casteel, the Shamrocks didn’t see it that way.
So that they played the top-seeded Colts as close as they did was no consolation; it only made the 2-1 defeat sting more.
“I’m very proud of the girls because we were able to —“
Quintana choked up as he eventually continued: “Because we did something that no other YC (girls soccer) team has done (make a state championship game), so for us it’s history. But it’s not the kind of history we wanted to make. We wanted to be the first to win a state championship.”
YC reached the championship game as the No. 11 seed, pulling off three straight upsets — two of which came in penalty kick shootouts — on the road against No. 6 Anthem Prep, No. 3 Veritas Prep and twotime defending state champ Fountain Hills (No. 2).
Casteel (15-0 AIA), meanwhile, entered the tournament as the No. 1 seed with a plus-101 goal differential — 101 goals for, zero against. And the Colts had already beaten the Shamrocks once this season (2-0 in a non-AIA match), and it was them who knocked YC out of last year’s 3A state tourney.
Yet it was the Shamrocks (14-1-1) who struck first Saturday, with freshman forward Ariana Leamons giving YC a 1-0 lead in the 18th minute. Casteel had dominated possession up to that point, but from then on the Shamrocks didn’t appear at all overmatched.
Casteel’s goals — the equalizer came in the 34th minute, the go-ahead in the 62nd — were less earned than given, at least in Quintana’s eyes. The first was a well-placed shot by Scarlett Frohardt from near the topright corner of the box that YC junior goalie Danisia Ellin couldn’t reach, but Quintana noted that the opportunity arose only after a failed clearance.
A farmore-obvious YC mistake resulted in the other.
After going the first 20plus minutes of the second half without a shot, Casteel earned a 62nd-minute free kick from a not-particularly-dangerous spot near midfield that was misplayed by a YC defender in the box and went in for an own goal.
“Little things are what decided the game,” Quintana said. “Unfortunately for us, we gave them those goals, those opportunities.”
That’s not to say Casteel didn’t have other chances, but the Shamrocks did do a particularly good job of not allowing star Casteel junior forward Samantha Anger (38 goals) or her teammates too many high-quality looks.
Three of the best chances for either side in the second half belonged to YC, first a Leamons’ shot inside the box in the 51st minute that a defender was just able to get in front of, and then two Leamons’ free kicks after Casteel had taken the 2-1 lead.
One of those free kicks just bent over Leamons’ target (the top-right corner), and the other — taken with 3:05 remaining, and YC’s last quality equalizing opportunity — sailed high.
Whereas Casteel attacked YC in a variety of ways, most of the Shamrocks’ chances were a product of Leamons’ ability to self-create.
“We had to contend with her all game,” Casteel coach Jason Hammonds said of Leamons, who finishes her freshman campaign with an area-high 38 goals. “We assigned our defenders to her, we had to make a change at defense to deal with her speed and just her touch.”
Though it’s unlikely to ease the Shamrocks’ pain, Hammonds’ praise didn’t stop at Leamons.
“Give all credit to Jesus and his team,” he said. “They are phenomenal. There’s nobody more deserving, nobody I wanted to play more in the championship than them, because that really was a battle of the two best teams in the 3A Conference.”