Lady Panther soccer places sixth at state

Posted 5/23/17

“For me as a coach this was the greatest weekend of soccer I have attended,” said PHS head coach Jack Haire. “And to be playing on Saturday means you have to win, and we did it: We played three days.”

Between 2008 and 2016, the Lady …

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Lady Panther soccer places sixth at state

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After suffering a heartbreaking, 4-3 overtime loss in its first game of the state tournament, the Lady Panther soccer team rebounded to beat Riverton 1-0 and advance to the consolation championship. The Powell High School girls ultimately lost to Star Valley, 6-0, to finish sixth.

“For me as a coach this was the greatest weekend of soccer I have attended,” said PHS head coach Jack Haire. “And to be playing on Saturday means you have to win, and we did it: We played three days.”

Between 2008 and 2016, the Lady Panther soccer team played in 15 games at the state tournament, winning only one game and scoring just four goals in seven trips to the tourney.

This season, the Lady Panthers doubled their win total and number of goals.

Lander 4, Powell 3

The first opponent Powell faced was Lander, squaring off with the Lady Tigers in a Thursday morning game in Sheridan.

“I thought they played extremely well,” Haire said of his squad. “I knew it was a winnable game.”

Lander scored about halfway through the first half of the game — a goal that Haire felt was “stoppable” — to make the halftime score 1-0.

The coach said the first half involved feeling each other out, with neither team knowing much about each other; Powell and Lander hadn’t played each other for a couple of seasons.

“But I knew about our players and I was very confident that we could win the game,” said coach Haire.

At halftime the coaches decided to switch goalkeepers from Melynda Davison to Treva Robson.  They also told the Lady Panthers they could win the game, “to leave it on the field, that we were just going to play the best and hardest soccer that we’ve ever played,” Haire said. “And they went out, in my opinion and did just that.”

Assisted by Jaya Smith, Powell freshman Kayla Kolpitcke scored a goal a few minutes into the second half to tie the game at 1.

But Lander scored about a minute later to regain the lead, 2-1.

In about the 55th minute, Powell “had pushed the defense up, our mids and forwards were controlling the ball and I thought we were passing the ball around really well,” coach Haire said. “One of the Lander [players] deflected a pass and it kind of went into Joey [Haire]’s direction.”

The coach said he’s not sure if he was heard, but he yelled, “Fire!” and Joey Haire booted the ball just inside the left corner of the goal with a big right foot from 45 yards out.

“From my view, you could see the arc of the ball and you could see the look of the keeper’s face and as she’s scrambling backwards you can see that ball just ...  sinks right into the bottom of the net,” Coach Haire said.

The goal from Joey Haire, a junior who played center defense, tied the game back up at 2.

“It was just an awesome shot,” said coach Haire. “There’s not many players that have that sort of ability to kick the ball that far.”

The goal “boosted me, it boosted them, it boosted everything, the whole morale, you could feel it,” the coach said. “Even though the game was tied, you could feel it, like we were dominating the game.”

Powell kept the ball on Lander’s side, then Kolpitcke — again assisted by Smith — broke through the defense and scored another goal to put the Lady Panthers up 3-2 in roughly the 78th minute.

“We were leading; we were winning a game in the first round of state finals,” said coach Haire, noting it was a feat the Lady Panther soccer team has never accomplished.

(The only other win in the history of Lady Panther soccer had been a second round game in 2013.)

However, with about 30 seconds left in regulation, Lander scored a goal to tie the game at 3 and force an overtime consisting of two 10-minute halves.

“Now we have to mentally prepare, we can’t mope about, we can’t be down on ourselves, we can’t hang our heads,” said coach Haire, adding, “I believe we stayed up.”

Lander scored eight minutes into the first overtime.

“They earned the goal … and then we can’t put one in after that,” coach Haire said.

Lander won the game 4-3.

“It was the most surreal thing to go through those set of emotions,” said coach Haire of the up-and-down battle.

“We were a train on the tracks and we were moving along pretty good and Lander was in our way and we were prepared for 80 minutes of that,” said coach Haire. “And we had it for 79 1/2 minutes.”

“It was the hardest loss I have ever taken, but — but — I am so grateful to have competed the way that we had throughout the season, throughout the play-in game, and especially in that game,” coach Haire said of the game against Lander.

He praised his players for working hard through the 100-minute-long game.

“And I do believe they will remember what it tastes like to lead a game and to maybe get a little over confident with just minutes left and make just simple mistakes,” he said. “But we make mistakes collectively as a team; we do not make them individually.”

“There was not one individual mistake in this game. We all made mistakes in this game,” coach Haire stated, including himself as a coach.

He praised Kolpitcke’s two-goal performance as a freshman.

“Players like [her], that you can build a team around and be a very competitive team,” the coach said. “And her effort this year has shown that.”

Davidson had nine saves and Robson had five saves.

Powell had 17 shots among five players.

Powell 1, Riverton 0

With Thursday’s loss to Lander, that pitted Powell against Riverton Friday morning.

Coach Haire asked assistant coach Stan Hedges to help keep the team pepped up after the tough loss to Lander — to help push each other.

“Immediately from warm-ups, I could tell the girls were there, they wanted it, especially our defense,” coach Haire said, adding, “We played 80 minutes of good soccer, defensive soccer.”

Senior Kayla Atkinson scored the game’s lone goal with an assist from Jaya Smith.

“Just excellent communication; the girls just wanted to win,” said coach Haire.

Goalkeeper Davison had six or eight saves, the lowest number of shots on goal Powell has had all season.

Coach Haire said the team was defensively tough with all of the players on top of their game.

Shea Swenson was described by coach Haire as having the game of her life in the left defender position.

“She [Swenson] was just outstanding,” he said. “Her kicks were solid, her speed was good, her transitions were good; she was very much part of a shutout win.”

Between Swenson, Jalie Timmons, Mallory Triplett and Jaighden Rayment, “Those five were just outstanding,” coach Haire said. “Communication was great, the hustle was great, the ball movement, just all of it was good.”

Powell had 18 shots on goal.

“They had an extremely good goalkeeper, but we dominated that game,” said coach Haire, adding, “now did it get nerve racking that last minute? Yes!”

He recalled coach Hedges chanting, “‘blow the whistle, blow the whistle, blow the whistle blow the whistle,’ and “all of a sudden they blow the whistle ‘tweet, tweet, tweet’ and, oh my goodness, we have won a game at state finals.”

“The girls put out all of their energy and effort, they laid it to Lander and they turned around and laid it out to Riverton and shut down a good Riverton team,” coach Haire said.

Powell had beat Riverton earlier in the year, 3-2 in overtime.

Star Valley 6, Powell 0

The win over Riverton, placed Powell in the consolation championship against Star Valley on Saturday morning.

“We faced, in my opinion, a top three team,” coach Haire said of the Star Valley game. “They got the toughest first game so they ended up in the loser side.”

Star Valley was the only team to beat Cody this year, a team that went on to win the state championship.

“They are a good team and in all honesty, I respect their coach very much and I respect their athletes, they have a very good program,” coach Haire said of the Star Valley team.

Star Valley scored at minute 17 and led 2-0 at halftime.

“We were very tough,” said coach Haire. “They moved the ball around well.”

In the second half, the Lady Braves went on to score four more times.

“Everybody was just flat tired — emotionally, physically, all of it. We were just tired,” coach Haire said.

Everyone on the roster who suited up got into the contest.

“It was a great experience for all of our girls to play in a game in state versus a very good Star Valley team,” said coach Haire, adding, “I believe our girls learned a lot but they walked off the field with a smile on their face and their heads held high because they knew that they had just finished an incredible season.”

Powell battled to sixth place in the state after posting a 4-9 regular season record.

“I believe we all left a better team and we’re not done,” said coach Haire.

The Lady Panther soccer team will hold the end of the year awards banquet Thursday at 5 p.m. at the PHS Commons.

“It was an incredible season for me, it was an incredible season for our coaching staff, it was an incredible season for the players and the future is bright,” said coach Haire.

Editor's note: The caption of the photo accompanying this article originally misidentified Jalie Timmons.

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