Glacier Peak makes it to state 3A soccer championship

Published 7:38 pm Saturday, May 29, 2010

LAKEWOOD — With the tension building by the second, the Glacier Peak High School boys soccer team needed a hero.

Who would have guessed a player who barely appeared during the regular season would step up and assume that mantle.

Freshman goalkeeper Jesus Mendoza, playing as a fill-in, produced the decisive save during an epic shootout, and the Grizzlies advanced to the Class 3A championship game by defeating the Capital Cougars 2-1 Friday afternoon at Harry E. Lang Stadium.

Shane Miller scored late in regulation for Glacier Peak to set up the thrilling finish. The Grizzlies (17-5), making their first foray into the state playoffs, face Mount Rainier for the title at 2 p.m. today. Glacier Peak also handed Capital (20-1) its first defeat of the season.

“Are you kidding?,” Glacier Peak coach Shannon Murray said about the way the result unfolded. “That’s pretty darn cool for a second-year program to get to this point. It says a lot about these dudes.”

And Mendoza was right at the center of it.

Mendoza was only playing because regular starting goalkeeper Andrew Weakley was in Florida attending a tournament with his club team. Mendoza had appeared in a grand total of one half for the varsity team this season, that coming in a non-league match against Sedro-Woolley.

In his first varsity start, Mendoza was thrust straight into the pressure cooker: a semifinal shootout that looked like it would never end. Each kick in the first 10 rounds was converted successfully, creating an unusual reset where the teams cycled back to their first shooters. All of the first 20 kicks were taken confidently, with shots into corners that gave the goalies no chance for a save.

“That was the most intense thing I’ve ever been through,” said Glacier Peak defender Rylan Kautz, who set up the Grizzlies’ goal in regulation. “The fact that even when we went past the first five and I had to be No. 6, I was nervous about that. Then the fact that it might come around again to me, I was freaking out.”

In the 11th round, facing Capital’s Nate Boatright for the second time, Mendoza made a flying save to his left for the first stop of the shootout. Moments later Kyle Bjornethun scored for the second time during penalty kicks to send Glacier Peak into the title game.

“It was nerve-wracking,” Mendoza said. “The whole time my knees were shaking. That last one I just had to guess and I guessed right.

“I remembered he kicked to my left with the first one, so I was just like, ‘All right, guess I’ll just try to dive to my left,’ and I came out lucky.”

Now the Grizzlies, unheralded going into the state tournament, are one win away from a state title in their first year with seniors.

“Going into this we felt confidence,” Kautz said. “But now the fact we’re actually in the finals, we’re going to give it our all and just go all out.”

For much of the game Glacier Peak looked like a team on the semifinal stage for the first time. The Grizzlies spent the first 70 minutes of the game creating little offensively, and it looked like Captial’s 1-0 lead was going to stand up.

But the one thing the Grizzlies were able to generate throughout the game was corner kicks, and on their fourth attempt they finally found the breakthrough. With nine minutes remaining in regulation, Brian Holguin floated a corner into the box. Kautz leaped above the fray and headed it back across goal, where Miller stabbed it into the top of the net, tying it at 1-1 and forcing overtime.

“For our first time here we played very nervous in the first half,” Murray said. “Then as the game wore on we got more and more comfortable and in the second half we really started going. We got the goal and you felt the momentum kind of cooking there. I felt we were going to get another one, I really did.”

The Grizzlies nearly made Murray’s premonition come true during the second overtime. Holguin lashed a shot from the top of the penalty box that deflected just wide off a defender. Glacier Peak created more havoc from the resulting corner, the Cougars eventually clearing off the line on Robin Hryciuk’s chance in close.

Nothing much was happening offensively for either team in the first half, but when Capital finally got a scoring chance in the 22nd minute to Cougars took full advantage.

Jacob Zimmerman was tripped up while heading toward goal, giving Capital a free kick from straight away 27 yards out. Boatright lined up the kick, curled it over the Glacier Peak wall, past a diving Mendoza and into the left corner, giving the Cougars a 1-0 lead. It was Capital’s first shot of the game and the first goal allowed by the Grizzlies during the state playoffs.

The best chances after that also fell to Capital, with Josh Phillips having one effort on either side of halftime drift just wide.