CORONA – There are only two seniors on the St. Margaret’s girls soccer team’s roster.
On a team as young as the Tartans, it’s only fitting one of those senior veterans won them a CIF-SS championship on Saturday.
Alexa Barbaresi nailed a clutch penalty kick with two minutes left in double overtime to give St. Margaret’s its third CIF title in four years with a 1-0 victory against La Cañada in the Division 5 championship game at Corona High.
“Alexa has been our leader all year, every time we needed somebody to step up big, it’s been Alexa,” Tartans coach Johnny Marmelstein said. “She’s a four-year starter … so for her to hit a penalty kick to win the game for us in a CIF championship, it’s just a fairy-tale ending for us.”
The penalty kick was awarded to St. Margaret’s after the referees called a handball on the Spartans. Barbaresi did the work from there.
“I knew that this could be the game, or could break the game,” she said. “So just buckle down mentally, ‘Alexa, you got this.’ You don’t really have a choice, you have to put it in. You can’t let your teammates down.”
The game was an up-and-down affair, like much of the season, for the Tartans (13-10-5).
La Cañada (22-1-1) seemed to dominate most of the game, but goalkeeper Hillary Beall erased any threat the Spartans posed with her outstanding goalkeeping.
Beall dove to her right to turn away a shot in the 53rd minute, which otherwise would have certainly been a goal.
“She’s a game-changer. Through the playoffs, out of the six games we played, we had five shutouts,” Marmelstein said. “That’s huge, and that made the difference today.”
One of those shutouts came against top-seeded La Quinta, who St. Margaret’s lost to in penalty kicks in the quarterfinals.
A Blackhawks player had received a red card in the previous game and watched the game from public property across the street.
A suspended player cannot attend their team’s next contest game, which CIF deemed she did, forcing the Blackhawks forfeit, and allowed the Tartans to advance.
“My girls deserve to be here and they played their heart out,” Marmelstein said. “I can’t speak for that situation. I can only say our girls came here and made the best out of a really terrible situation, and they earned the title against the No. 3 seed, who hadn’t lost a game all year long.”
Contact the writer: amorales@ocregister.com
