Royal’s Season Ends Amid Series of Somber Warnings : High school soccer: Top-seeded Highlanders can’t weather challenge by Edison in first round, 4-2.

How’s this for a series of portents?

As the Royal High boys’ soccer team--top-seeded in the Southern Section Division I playoffs--prepared for its first-round match against Huntington Beach Edison on Friday, the skies began to cloud over.

As the match started, it started raining.

And as Edison jumped to a two-goal advantage in the first half, a brief hailstorm hit Royal’s field.

Fitting. The Highlanders’ season came to a dismal, stormy end in a 4-2 loss to the Chargers, who got three goals from senior forward Phil Urkov.

“It hurts the most of any year because we played a good solid game,” said Royal Coach Kevin Corley, in his third season as the Highlander coach. “We just had some individuals in the back make some big mistakes. The kind of goals we let in really deflate a team. Their first goal was good. Their next three were not quality goals.”

Charger players might argue. But there was no debating that Edison is a quality team.

The Chargers finished third in the Sunset League behind powerhouses Santa Ana and Marina, so they earned a playoff berth as a wild-card entry--which ordinarily connotes mediocrity.

But they were a wild-card team in name only. The Chargers were ranked first in the division earlier this season, and they demolished Redondo, 8-1, in a Wednesday playoff match.

Royal’s Corley and assistant Andy Silva attended that encounter.

“We said, ‘Oh, boy, this is going to be tough,’ ” Corley said.

And it was. Urkov gave Edison (19-5-1) a 1-0 lead 10 minutes into the first half with a 15-yard shot to the lower left corner of the goal.

Ten minutes later, Charger midfielder Brett Jorgenson got behind the Highlanders’ defense and flicked a head ball over Highlander goalie Kevin Bell’s outstretched hands.

Royal (21-4-3), which lost in the first round of the playoffs for the second consecutive year, closed to 2-1 at halftime on a penalty shot by Chris Fernandez, but Urkov scored twice in the second half. The first goal came on a rebound that Bell allowed to slip through his hands. The second came on a breakaway, and this shot also went off Bell’s hands.

“It feels great to beat somebody who’s No. 1,” Urkov said. “Because we were there earlier.”