Flintridge Prep girls’ soccer wins to earn league title shot
LA CAÑADA — Although the Flintridge Prep girls’ soccer coaches and players didn’t want to look at Tuesday’s match against Chadwick as a must-win, it certainly was in one respect.
The Rebels entered the match in second place in the Prep League with one loss. That loss came at the hands of three-time defending champion Pasadena Poly, which entered the day undefeated in league play. Coincidently, the Rebels and the Panthers square off Thursday in the final game of the regular season.
To even set up a possible league title showdown, Flintridge Prep had to defeat Chadwick at home. The Rebels did just that, scoring three goals in the first half to earn a 3-1 win against the Dolphins.
“I don’t think today was a must-win for us,” said Rebels Coach Esteban Chavez, whose team is 14-2-5, 8-1 in league. “When we started this season, we just wanted to make the playoffs. Then when we started playing well in league we wanted to get into the playoffs and hopefully not as the No. 3 team. …Then as we’ve been going we were able to lock down second place.
“Since we already have second, we just wanted to win today to hopefully get a shot at sharing a league title.”
Pasadena Poly defeated Flintridge Prep in the teams’ first meeting Jan. 29, 2-1, on a late goal.
“To be honest with you, there is really no pressure on our side for Thursday’s game,” Chavez said. “All the pressure is on them because they have first, we don’t have first. It is their senior night and their seniors have never lost a league game. So there is so much pressure on them.
“We have an excitement about the game and the girls really set themselves up to be in this situation, even to play for a share of the league title.”
The Rebels received another strong performance against the Dolphins (5-8-1, 3-6) from freshman forward Helen Schaefer, who scored two goals. Schaefer is in the midst of an outstanding season, having already broken the Rebels’ single-season scoring record, as she currently has 33 scores.
Schaefer got Flintridge Prep rolling with a nifty left-footed goal in the 17th minute on an assist from Katherine Pinney.
“We never go into games thinking that we have to win it,” Schaefer said. “We want to win, but it’s not a must-win. We knew what we had to get done today and that’s what we did.
“I think that any time that we get up and we are leading, it settles us down and I think that helped us today.”
Schaefer gave the Rebels a 2-0 lead in the 34th minute on another assist from Pinney.
Just two minutes later, Flintridge Prep went up, 3-0, when Julia Gonzalez passed the ball around a Chadwick defender, caught up to the ball and scored in the 36th minute.
The Dolphins did a good job at pinning in the Flintridge Prep offense during the second half, as the Rebels accounted for just a handful of scoring chances.
Chadwick scored its only goal in the 48th minute on a strike from Nkem Iregbulem.
