LAKEWOOD — Freshman Sam Pettinger was in the right place at the right time for Archbishop Murphy in its Class 2A state semifinal girls soccer game against Eatonville.

With the Wildcats trailing 2-1, Pettinger scored the tying goal with 13.8 seconds left in the first half and then knocked in what turned out to be the winning goal one minute into the second half to lead Archbishop Murphy to a 3-2 victory over the Cruisers Nov. 17 at Harry E. Lang Stadium.

Pettinger’s first goal was the result of a scramble between senior Drea Gaitan and the Eatonville goalkeeper.

“It (ball) just popped out to me,” Pettinger said. “I told myself to get it and get it in for the team.”

Archbishop Murphy head coach Pat Jack noticed a change in her players late in the first half.’

“The momentum picked up right before the half,” she said. “The kids were getting fired up. They thought that they could do it. We knew that they could.”

Pettinger scored her game-winning shot off a crossing pass from freshman Lindsey Bos.

With a 3-2 lead, the Wildcats kept the pressure on for the rest of the second half.

“You don’t know what is going to happen,” Pettinger said. “We needed to keep it on our side of the (field) and keep playing hard. We all had a lot of energy. We had our momentum going. We just needed to remember that we needed to keep playing hard.”

The Wildcats found themselves behind 2-0 in the first half when Eatonville’s Jenna Samora used her speed to slip through the Archbishop Murphy defense for a pair of unassisted goals in the first 15 minutes.

The Wildcats stayed calm despite the deficit.

“We try our hardest the whole game and never give up,” Pettinger said. “The team just kept playing and gave it their all no matter what. (We have) a lot of heart for each other.”

Jack actually did not feel Archbishop Murphy was outplayed by Eatonville early in the first half.

“I thought we had been playing them about the same even though it was 2-0,” Jack said. “We had as many chances as they did. Ours just weren’t sinking. It helped to get that one right before halftime. The girls saw that they could actually shoot it in and get a goal. Then the second half they came out strong.”

Junior Emma Nelson jump-started the Wildcats’ comeback by pushing a shot to the right of the goalkeeper at the 25th minute mark to cut the deficit to 2-1.

“We haven’t been able to finish all year,” Jack said. “We had three or four good chances that we muffed then all of a sudden they started hitting them. That was grand.”

The big change in the second half was on defense as Jack had Aleigh Mansfield and another defender shadow Samora. The strategy worked as Samora was shut down for the rest of the game.

“The second half we saw we had to contain No. 16 (Samora),” Jack said. “There was no other possible way to finish the game. She was very strong so we put two people on her for the whole rest of the game.”

Mansfield had the primary responsibility for defending Samora and the other player depended on who was available.

“We talked about locking down No. 16,” Jack said. “We needed two players on her at all times.”

The Wildcats controlled much of the action in the second half.

“I thought they handled the ball better than the other team,” Jack said of her players. “I thought they possessed it better.”