SOUTHERN SECTION CHAMPIONSHIPS : Torrance Nudges South, 2-1

First, November Wallace caught an elbow to her forehead. Then she went to the sidelines to catch her breath.

But in the end, Wallace caught South Torrance High by surprise.

Wallace’s goal 91 minutes and 21 seconds into the game--early into the second overtime session--lifted Torrance to a 2-1 victory over scrappy South in the Southern Section Division III-A girls’ soccer championship Saturday at Gahr High in Cerritos.

If the score had remained tied at 1-1 after the second 10-minute overtime period, the schools would have been declared co-champions.

So Wallace’s goal could not have come at a better time for Torrance, which finished 27-1-1.

South goalkeeper Heidi Emmrich was having the game of her life. She faced 25 shots and made 11 saves. But Wallace’s goal happened so quickly, not even Emmrich could do anything about it.

Wallace lurked outside the penalty box, took a head pass from winger Jenny Yokoyama on a bounce, spun to her right, and one-timed a low volley into the left corner of the net that barely eluded Emmrich’s dive.

The goal was especially sweet for Wallace, a sophomore midfielder, who had to leave the field with nine minutes left in regulation after taking an inadvertent elbow to the forehead from South defender Kim McMullen.

“I think it actually helped me a lot,” Wallace said. “It gave me a chance to rest for a while.”

South (15-9-2) had lost three previous meetings (twice in the Pioneer League and once in the South Bay tournament) to Torrance by a combined score of 10-0. So South co-Coach Stacey Chapman knew she had to change strategy for the final.

South marked Torrance’s forward players tightly, with an aggressive defense that slowed the Tartars, but also added 27 fouls.

“We didn’t want to give their players a lot of space to run into,” Chapman said. “We dropped our fullbacks back and made them come at us instead of having to chase their forwards down all day.”

For a while, it worked.

South’s Rachel Bosma scored the game’s first goal 10:40 into the game, on a volley into the upper left-hand corner of the goal past Torrance goalie Jenny Halladay, who had 21 shutouts this season.

“We came out quick and put a ball in the back of the net,” Chapman said. “Torrance came in thinking they were going to blow us out of the water.”

Torrance appeared shocked for a while, then regrouped. Right winger Selina Mandel got the Tartars even at 32:48, scoring past Emmrich into the left corner.

“We’re a notorious second-half team,” Torrance Coach John Jackson said. “We’ve always been able to dominate more in the second half. Finally, we were able to finish one off and put one in.”

Jackson said South’s blue-collar play came as a bit of a surprise.

“We kind of knew what to expect, but we didn’t think it would be a cakewalk,” he said. “It was a little more physical than we would have liked. I think that wore us down a bit.”

Still, Torrance had enough left to finish a near-perfect season. The Tartars, who went 23-2-4 last year and lost in the second round of the playoffs, rebounded to win the L.A. Games title this summer and took off from there.

“It looks like we’re getting a winning tradition going,” Jackson said. Now, Jackson and six of his soccer players get to change hats--literally.

Jackson doubles as the Torrance softball coach, and six of his soccer players compete in softball well. Torrance plays its first softball game Saturday in the Hawthorne tournament.

“We haven’t even had one practice yet,” Jackson said. “Obviously, this was more important, though. This was worth it.”