LAKE STEVENS — Brenden George was barely there when the Snohomish High School boys’ soccer team clinched the Western Conference’s North Division on Wednesday night.
Fortunately for SHS, George was right in the middle of the action when the Panthers finished off their regular season with thei
r most exciting win yet.
After George spent most of Wednesday’s second half and overtime on the Panthers’ bench with head in hands because of a migraine headache and nausea, he returned to the game for the penalty-kick shootout and made the save of the night. His diving save of Lake Stevens star Josh Otusanya’s penalty kick — the 12th PK of the session — clinched a 1-0 victory after 90 minutes of scoreless soccer.
As for that migraine headache?
“It never really went away,” said George, who lost sight in his right eye with two minutes to play in the first half, leaving Luke Riske* to keep the goal for the second half and two overtime sessions. “I still had it in the PK’s.”
Snohomish coach Dan Pingrey said George talked his way back into the penalty-kick session by saying that his migraine was gone.
“I told them it went away,” George said with a wink shortly after turning away Otusanya’s shot to preserve the 3-2 penalty-kick win.
On a night that saw four different goalkeepers preserve 90 minutes of scoreless play, it was fitting that one of them would finish the extra session off in style. Otusanya returned from a three-game layoff with an ankle injury to get turned away by George on the final shot of the night.
As exciting as the finish was, it didn’t matter in the final Wesco North standings. After Snohomish forced the PK session with a 0-0 tie through two five-minute overtime sessions, the Panthers officially clinched the title because Lake Stevens — which entered the evening trailing by three points in the standings — could not catch them.
But there was plenty of drama nonetheless.
Snohomish’s Brendon Wheeler opened the PK with a goal in the upper right corner, then the pressure was really on when George, having returned from the migraine, made a beautiful save on the Vikings’ first kick. Snohomish missed its next shot, and then Josh Lund of Lake Stevens tied the score at 1.
The teams traded goals for a 2-2 tie before Lake Stevens goalkeeper Dalton Roberts made a pair of diving gloved saves and the Vikings missed their shots to keep it even through 10 shots.
The teams returned for an extra PK, and Snohomish’s Troy McCarty* drilled the eventual game-winner past a diving Roberts, one of two Lake Stevens goalkeepers to play in the game, for a 3-2 lead.
Otusanya, who just missed a shot from about 20 yards out in the final seconds of regulation, shot to the lower left side of the goal on Lake Stevens’s sixth PK but couldn’t get it past a diving George.
“He missed some shots he would normally make,” Lake Stevens coach Scott Flanders said of Otusanya, who came off the bench and played limited minutes after missing three previous games with the ankle injury.
For Snohomish’s George, who admitted he was still lacking vision on his right side while manning the goal for the PK session, it was a perfect way to finish the night — and the regular season.
“I think my favorite thing about playing goal is penalty kicks,” he said. “I can tell by the way a guy opens his hips which way he’s going to go.”
Snohomish (11-5 overall, 11-4 in the Wesco) was one of three teams with a shot at the league title going into Wednesday night’s action. Marysville-Pilchuck could have factored into the race had Lake Stevens won in regulation or overtime, but the end of the second overtime led to some celebration among Panthers players because the title was clinched.
“It’s nice to click back into things after the schools split,” said Pingrey, whose Panthers won their first outright title since cross-town school Glacier Peak opened its doors in 2008-09. “We had a losing record for the first time, at 4-5, and got beat 5-0 (by Mariner), so there were a lot of things that had to happen.
“It’s been a nice culmination — we knew we were good enough, but we had to change our formation and simplify things — and now it’s time to take the next step.”
*Correction, May 6, 2011: This article originally used incorrect names for Luke Riske and Troy McCarty.
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