HUNTINGTON BEACH – The Edison girls soccer team struggled with possession during the first half of its Sunset League game against third-ranked Los Alamitos on Tuesday.
However, in the final moments of the double-overtime period, the 10th-ranked Chargers made their final touch on the ball count against the Griffins.
Taylor Wasserman got on the other end of Mikayla Edwards’ corner kick and scored the winning goal to give the Chargers to a 1-0 victory that clinched the Sunset League title.
“I thought we played an excellent second half,” said Edison coach Kerry Crooks, who estimated there were 30 seconds left when the winning corner kick happened.
“We know that our set pieces are pretty special and we’ve talked about having our keeper go up to cause some chaos.”
For Wasserman, the goal came as a big relief. Just moments earlier, her header attempt off of another corner kick hit the crossbar.
“To be honest, I thought we had lost it,” she said. “We got the other corner and I told myself this is it, and gave it everything I had. It was Senior Night … I wanted to win.
“I knew where the ball was going. I really just threw my body into it. It hit my shoulder and head and it went into the back of the net. I was crying and I was laughing.”
This was the teams’ third meeting this season. Each team had a 2-1 victory, with Edison’s coming in their first league match on Jan. 17.
In the first half, Los Alamitos had several chances on goal, with Monique Ponce and Ally LaCarra Platt leading the attack.
In the second half, the Chargers (13-7-2, 7-3-0) were able to settle into the game and put the Griffins (20-4-3, 6-3-1) on their heels a bit.
“I think we were playing with a little bit of fear,” Wasserman said. “We were definitely backing off, we weren’t tackling or winning battles. At halftime that was something that we discussed. We needed to start winning our battles and once we started doing that, we put Los Al on the defense.”
For the Griffins, it was an exceptionally disappointing ending given the chances they had to score in regulation.
“All year long we’ve been talking about the process of how we play,” Los Alamitos assistant coach Mossy Kennedy said. “We were happy with the way the girls played. This is going to be painful and it is difficult, but our kids played the way we’ve asked them to play.”
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@scng.com
