Vail Mountain repeated as the 2A girls soccer champion. More photos. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
COMMERCE CITY — For the second year in a row, Vail Mountain captured the Class 2A girls soccer championship.
In 2015, the 2A tournament’s inaugural year, Vail Mountain won 2-1. This time around, the margin wasn’t so close, with the Gore Rangers executing a 7-0 shutout on Tuesday.
“We brought our work rate up to a whole different level,” said coach Bob Bandoni. “We were very quick to recover on counter-attacks, something Dawson is very good at. We made sure we had pressure on the ball as soon as we could. When we would get the ball back, we were shaped up pretty well for the goal.”
Earlier this May, Dawson traveled to Vail and beat the Gore Rangers on their home turf, 3-2. Less than a month later, it was a whole different game. The defending champions took a commanding lead in the first half, scoring five goals in forty minutes.
In their regular season matchup, Dawson went up 3-0 before Vail Mountain tallied two. Vail Mountain’s goals Tuesday gave them nine unanswered against Dawson between the two games.
Six players got on the scoreboard for the Gore Rangers, with two goals coming from freshman Anwyn Urquhart, a feat now sophomore Tess Johnson accomplished in her first championship game last year.
On Tuesday, Johnson has one assist and one goal.
More photos. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
Vail Mountain possessed the ball for the majority of the game. The Rangers were in perfect position for each of their through balls that fed from the midfield.
The first few shots were either wide or stopped, but it was only a short delay in a pummeling of power and speed to the back of the net for the rest of the game.
Dawson finally got its first shot on goal at the 22-minute mark, when lead scorer Hannah Isenhart snuck one through the Vail Mountain defense. The junior continued to move her way through the Vail Mountain lineup with solid lead passes and dribbling, but nothing could get close enough to the goal.
The first of seven for the Gore Rangers came from sophomore Emma Hall, who got open left and popped it right, over the charging Dawson goalie. Less than a minute later, Johnson replicated the goal from the opposite side.
Junior Lindsey Peterson added the third when she broke the defense and ran past the goalie for an open shot. With 20 seconds remaining in the first half, a corner from Vail Mountain slipped in, giving the Gore Rangers all the more momentum to run into halftime.
In the second, the game remained at Vail Mountain’s feet, with two goals from Urquhart in the first two minutes.
“We practiced moving the ball quickly, switching enough to tire them,” Urquhart said. “It allowed us to play the sides, get to the endlines and push the ball in. It also made them run a lot more, which made it easier on us.”
Junior Sidney Sappenfield added the last one in the final 15 minutes. Sappenfield was the oldest to score for her team, a team with as young a lineup as last year’s winning squad.
In their three game playoff stretch, Vail Mountain allowed only one goal and scored 18.
Speed and positioning for the No. 2-seeded team took over to complete the high-scoring upset over the top team No. 1 Dawson.
The 100-mile journey from the mountains landed them their third-ever school championship, second girls soccer title, and sets them aside as the only ever 2A girls soccer champions.