Diablos Slip and Slide Past Edison
Tears welled in the eyes of Susie Daher Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn’t joy or sadness . . . it was a natural flushing reaction after a too-literal here’s-mud-in-your-eye toast from her players.
A group of Mission Viejo players joined hands, sprinted across the Edison High field and dived headlong into a mud puddle--maybe “small pond” would be a better description--and emerged as muck monsters to run and hug Daher, the Mission Viejo coach, after a 2-0 victory over Edison in the girls’ Division II soccer semifinals.
“It’s time for me to give this team credit,” Daher said as she tried to blink away the sludge in her right eye. “I’ve never seen a team play as well together as they are right now. They’ve got their ‘A’ game going and they’re having fun.”
The victory over Sunset League champion Edison (22-2-5) sent the Diablos (17-1-7) into the Division II final against Ventura Buena Saturday at either Cerritos Gahr or La Mirada high at a time to be decided.
Mission Viejo’s junior strikers, Natalie Robertson and Stacey Mescher, and UCLA-bound senior winger Kendal Billingsley kept constant pressure on the Chargers’ talented defense, but it was the midfielders who came through with the goals.
In the sixth minute, a deflected shot rebounded into an open spot in the Edison defense and sophomore Bethany Haynes’ shot from the corner of the penalty area soared past goalkeeper Jenna Huff into the far corner of the net.
“I just saw it bounce into space and tried to hit it solid,” said Haynes.
The Chargers’ Ali Binder, who had combined with Huff for 19 shutouts this season, was in goal in the second half and was victimized by a similar, if more spectacular, score.
Portland-bound senior Lindsay Huie ran onto a through ball that bounded off an Edison defender and slammed a 30-yard bullet that hooked into the far top corner in the 62nd minute.
The game, played in intermittent showers on a quagmire where the ball either skipped erratically off wet turf or stopped dead in standing water, could have been a very different story. In the first minute, the ball skidded loose in front of Mission Viejo keeper Katie Wright, who slid to the ground with a handful of players from both teams. Someone from Edison got a foot on the ball in the scramble and the shot from point-blank range caromed off Mission Viejo sweeper Nicole James and into the arms of Wright.
Edison’s only other shot in the first 51 minutes of play, a 20-yard drive by defender Ashley Rouintree, was less than a yard wide.
“I don’t know how that first shot didn’t go in,” Edison Coach Kerry McGrath-Crooks said. “If it does, that changes a lot. But they’re a very talented team and they deserved it.”