The Freeway League championship was already in hand. Had been for just over a week.
With Thursday afternoon’s regular-season finale doubling as Troy’s Senior Day, Warriors coach Ed Kephart feared a letdown, which would affect the team’s playoff seeding when the brackets are released Monday.
Fortunately for Kephart, his team did what was needed to bolster its spot in the Division 2 playoff picture.
Tenth-ranked Troy concluded its Freeway League schedule with a 1-0 win over Sunny Hills on Thursday, finishing with a perfect 10-0-0 league clip and likely ensuring itself one of the top four seeds in postseason.
“They wanted to be 10-0,” Kephart said of his squad, who won its first league championship since 2010 and is ranked fourth in the CIF-SS poll. “We understood that if we screwed up and we lost this, we could go from playing a wildcard in the first round to playing a No. 2 team that might give us problems. That’s huge.”
The Warriors (17-1-5) have reeled off 10 victories to conclude the regular season, conceding only two goals throughout that stretch.
Offensively, Troy had also been dominant, scoring more than three goals per game throughout that stretch. On Thursday, the Warriors’ lone score came on a Lancers’ own-goal in the 10th minute of play.
Senior forward Lauren Woodyard applied the pressure deep into the attacking third, advancing the ball all the way to the Sunny Hills endline. Before her momentum took her out of play and gave the Lancers a goal kick, Woodyard chipped a beautiful ball across the box, out of the reach of Lancers keeper Amanda Poertner.
When a Sunny Hills defender attempted to boot the ball out of the box on the volley, it skimmed off her cleat and into the back of the net for the own goal.
As it played out, it was the only ball that got past Poertner on the afternoon, as the senior keeper finished with six saves, at least half of those being diving stops.
“Goal scoring I knew was going to be the hard part for this year,” Sunny Hills coach Jeff Gordon explained. “Everybody is brand new, and it takes time for us to develop goal scorers. But once we get them, watch out.”
The Lancers finished the year with a 10-7-7 overall record and a 6-3-1 league mark. They will be the No. 2 representative out of the Freeway League when the brackets are released.
In the Sunset League:
No. 2 Huntington Beach 3, Marina 1: The Oilers capped off an unbeaten league slate as Claire Grimes and Darcy Weiser scored second-half goals to break open a match that was tied 1-1 at the half.
In addition to capturing its first Sunset League crown, Huntington Beach did so by going 7-0-3 along the way. The Oilers finished the regular season with a 17-1-6 mark, and its only loss of the season came in penalty kicks against Esperanza in the Excalibur Tournament semifinals.
After being ranked No. 2 in the latest CIF-SS Division 1 poll, the Oilers figure to be the second overall seed when seedings are released on Monday.
In the Empire League:
Cypress 8, Western 0: The Centurions went 10-0 in league, winding out the regular season with a dominant performance over the Pioneers. Hailee Allard and Sydnee Busbee each netted two goals to lead the Cypress scoring barrage.
Ranked No. 3 in the latest CIF Division 3 poll, the Centurions should be one of the top seeds in their bracket.
