PAC-5 blanks Sacred Hearts for ILH D2 crown


PAC-5 freshman Maia Santa Monica shoots the ball past Sacred Hearts keeper Alexis Schmidt in the first half. Michael Lasquero | SL

WAIPAHU — Maia Santa Monica and Fua Nasu each scored a goal to help PAC-5 to a 2-0 win over Sacred Hearts Saturday for its second Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division II championship in three seasons.

A late afternoon crowd of about 400 spectators at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium saw the Wolfpack improve to 8-4 with their second win this season over the Lancers, who fell to 6-6.

It was the third meeting between the teams this year — all of them coming in the last 10 days. PAC-5 won the first game by a score of 4-0, but Sacred Hearts took the rematch three days later, 1-0.

"We had to change things up because we knew that Sacred Hearts is real physical players, but we just had to go out there and do what we needed to do," Wolfpack first-year coach Shannon Leong said. "I kept telling the girls to keep doing the things we needed to do, don't retaliate back and just play our game, and it worked."

Both teams had already punched their ticket to the state tournament — which gets underway in two weeks — but with the win Saturday, PAC-5 secured one of four seeded state berths and the first-round bye that comes with it.

"That's great," Leong said. "We get more time to work on things that we need to work on and I guess, we're just excited to see who we're going to end up playing. We don't know who we're going to play, but we still need to do the things we need to do, but I'm looking forward to it, the girls are looking forward to it. Tonight is their night."

The Wolfpack got on the board late in the first half, when Maia Santa Monica scored on a breakaway in the 37th minute, off an assist from Jaeda Doctolero.

The score held until the 70th minute. Doctolero served a cross in from the right flank over to Fua Nasu, who put away her sixth goal of the season to double up the PAC-5 lead.

"It was awesome because that goalkeeper is just excellent; she gets every single ball," said Leong, whose son, Ryan, coached Campbell to an OIA Division I championship in 2015. "There's some things we still need to work on, but I'm happy for them."

Leong said the game plan was to play wide and possess the ball.

"What happened was we changed up the defense compared to what we played them the second time — when we lost, 1-0 — so we had to make changes in the back and what we wanted to do was spread the ball out more," Leong said. "They want the ball, make them chase the ball, so the girls knew what to do and it worked."

Sacred Hearts was held to just one shot on goal, which came in the first half. It did not attempt a corner kick, while PAC-5 took six corners and registered 13 of its 22 total shots on goal.

Had the Lancers won Saturday, the teams would have faced off for a fourth time this season Tuesday afternoon for the overall ILH championship.

The Queen's Medical Center/HHSAA D2 State Championships will take place Jan. 30 - Feb. 2 at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Complex.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].