Chaminade Is Not Pleased to Share Crown

The Chaminade High girls’ soccer team won its second consecutive championship.

Sort of.

The Eagles played to a 0-0 tie against St. Lucy’s and were subsequently crowned Southern Section Division III co-champions, but they wanted more Saturday night at Gahr High.

Neither team seemed particularly overjoyed by the fact that Southern Section playoff games do not have overtimes or shootouts.

“Our spirits are kind of down right now,” said Chaminade midfielder Jen Valentine, who scored the winning goal with three minutes left in the championship last season against El Modena.

“I was praying we could get the same opportunity [as last season], but it never came around.”

Chaminade had an opportunity to take the lead in the 26th minute.

Kerrie Clavadetscher lined up for a penalty kick, but drilled the ball straight ahead into the waiting arms of goalkeeper Tiana Webb.

“She’s been hitting them well the whole time and she’s a senior, but that’s a lot of pressure,” Chaminade Coach Mike Evans said. “I wouldn’t have called on anybody else.”

Other than that, the first half was eerily quiet for the top-seeded Eagles (26-2-2), who came into the game outshooting opponents by a 520-108 margin and outscoring them, 99-11.

Despite Chaminade’s long bench--the Eagles typically go about 17 players deep--St. Lucy’s was the aggressor in the second half.

The second-seeded Regents (17-3-5) logged enough time to pay rent on Chaminade’s side of the field, but to no avail.

“Whenever you keep on pounding like that, you think sooner or later, it should come,” St. Lucy’s Coach Shelley O’Brien said. “But Chaminade just kept on clearing and clearing.”

Before the game, the Eagles arrived on the same bus that took the Chaminade boys’ basketball team to a playoff championship victory earlier in the day.

The Eagles also could have laid claim to a pre-game psychological edge--the teams played to a 1-1 deadlock in the Foothill tournament in December, but Chaminade won on a shootout.

But there was no victor Saturday.

“Either it was fate for them or fate for us,” Evans said.

Said Valentine: “A tie is better than a loss, but we wanted a win. Our captains will try to make us realize that we’re co-champs.”