No. 1 Colorado Academy girls lacrosse beat No. 2 Mullen in overtime. More photos. (Jeff Tucker/jefferywtucker.zenfolio.com)
DENVER – Play is stopped following a foul call on Mullen, halting the clock with 1:27 left in the first period of overtime.
The game has been officiated tightly as the aggression from the two top-ranked girls lacrosse teams warranted stricter enforcement from the two lone referees.
And as the whistle blew to continue the game, the stadium was overcome with silence as the crowd watched what would be the final play of the contest.
“I got the ball from my teammate (senior Anna Gallagher), who was across the restraining line, I ran down and I told (senior Ella Annest) to run through, and I ran off her back … top-right corner,” said Colorado Academy junior Sydney Prokupek.
Prokupek’s game-winning goal lifted No. 1 Colorado Academy to an 8-7 overtime win over No. 2 Mullen on Wednesday.
“We really just had a positive mindset and wanted to play our hardest because we wanted to win really badly,” Prokupek said about her team’s mindset going into going into the overtime period. “It was going to come down to whoever wanted the ball more and we were able to do that.”
Part of the reason why both of these teams came into the night as the top two ranked teams is because they can score in bunches, which both showed Wednesday night in multiple respective scoring runs.
Heading into the game, Colorado Academy averaged 13 goals per game. Mullen averaged 14. Combined, both offenses accounted for a total of 93 goals in the first quarter of the season.
More photos. (Jeff Tucker/jefferywtucker.zenfolio.com)
And even though both teams had separate 4-0 scoring runs and seemingly traded goals back-and-forth, the forceful defensive play and abundance of fouls on both teams is what prevented any team from maintaining a rhythm offensively.
Mullen jumped out to an early 1-0 lead, but Colorado Academy flipped the switch offensively when it went on a 4-0 scoring run thanks in part to junior Claire Wright. Wright finished the evening with a hat trick.
But it wouldn’t take long for Mullen to respond. The Mustangs went on a 4-0 run of their own, and took a 5-4 lead into halftime.
“We stopped trying to run the ball up the field and instead passed the ball up so we could clear, but they did a terrific job of resetting and defending, which caused us to turn it over a lot,” Mullen coach Danny Cisneros said. “Yet once we figured it out, we were able to move into our offensive zone and set up to get goals.”
The half couldn’t have come at a better time for Colorado Academy, and it had lost all momentum built midway through the first half.
It was Wright who took over early in the second. Within the first six minutes of play in the game’s second half, Wright scored two goals within 27 seconds of one another to put her team back in front at 6-5.
The final three goals of regulation occurred before the 7:30 minute mark, and from there the teams both went cold as the aggression pumped up once more, sending the teams into extra time.
Colorado Academy coach Stephanie Sanders knows this was a hard-earned win for her girls. Conversely, she knows that her team will see Mullen again down the road when the stakes are higher.
“Definitely, I think they’re a great team. This was a great game for us because they’re one of the best teams we’re going to see,” Sanders said. “We are at a point in the season where we’ve only played four games and I think we saw some really tough competition early on and I definitely think we will see them again. So every time we play them, hopefully it will be a great game.”