The Waipahu Marauders girls soccer team poses with their championship plague after beating Kalaheo for the OIA D2 crown. Leighland Tagawa | Special to SL

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Sat, Jan 21, 2017 @ Castle

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Waipahu

1

Kalaheo

0

Final	1st	2nd	OT	2OT	PK	Tot
Waipahu (9-5-1)	0	1	-	-	-	1
Kalaheo (8-6-1)	0	0	-	-	-	0

A. Somera (54')

KANEOHE — Alysha Somera scored in the 54th minute to lift Waipahu past Kalaheo, 1-0, in the title game of the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division II tournament at Castle Saturday night.

The West top-seeded Marauders improved to 8-3-1, while the East top-seeded Mustangs fell to 7-4-1.

Waipahu claimed just its second OIA championship and first under second-year coach Brent Murakami.

"To see the growth in the last two years was big time," Murakami said. "I mean, every day we were better — all the way from the end of October until today."

The Marauders, whose only other league crown came in 2012, handed the Mustangs their third loss in their last five games and denied them a second straight OIA title.

Waipahu did it without two key players in sophomores Mya Tolentino and Jessi Lopez. Tolentino, a midfielder, was injured during warm-ups prior to Thursday's semifinal win over Waianae, and Lopez, a forward, has yet to be cleared from a concussion suffered in her team's regular-season finale against Kapolei on Jan. 9.

"We had a lot of adversity with two key players that didn't play because of injury, so this one definitely was pretty special because it was a complete team effort,"

Tolentino, in particular, was a key loss, having scored six goals on the year, which ties her for the second most on the team. Murakami said being forced to play without her Thursday helped prepare the rest of the group for Saturday's match.

"I think that was huge," Murakami said. "With the loss of Mya on Thursday and we were able to play a complete game without her, we kind of start to figure out what we need to do. I think if she got injured tonight, I think mentally it would have been a lot tougher with the wind, the rain, all these things coming at us, and then if a player was lost to injury, so I think Thursday was a good prep for us for tonight."

Somera, a junior forward, scored off an assist from freshman midfielder Kaycee Manding.

Manding sent a long pass across the 18-yard box to Somera, who collected the ball on the right side of the goal, cut back toward the middle of the field and fired a shot from about 10 yards out that found the netting.

It was Somera's team-leading 12th goal of the season and second in as many games. She also scored the game-winner in Thursday's 2-1 semifinal win over Waianae.

Somera made up for a missed scoring opportunity late in the first half. After Karlee Manding threw a Kalaheo foul inside the 18-yard box, Somera lined up the penalty kick. Her penalty kick appeared to be good, but Waipahu was ruled for encroachment on the play and Somera was forced to re-try the penalty kick. Her second attempt just missed a few feet high of the top right corner of the goal.

"The first one it was actually kind of our fault, but my teammate stepped into the box before I kicked it, so that's why the ref had to re-do it, and then the second PK — I knew where I was supposed to go — but I kind of hit it wrong, but the ball moved so I kind of hit it wrong," Somera said.

The situation played out similarly to Thursday night, when Somera missed a penalty kick against Waianae, but eventually scored the game-winning goal.

"I think that was the tough part because we finally got the monkey off of her back to get the PK scored and then it gets called back, so mentally for her it was big time," Murakami said. "For her to fight back and get that goal was huge."

Somera left the game for an extended period of time in the second half after she was on the receiving end of a high kick to her head. It came in the midst of a frantic final 20 minutes that saw the Mustangs threaten several times offensively.

Murakami credited his full backs — outside-backs Jenna Ramirez and Jaeda Jimeno and center-backs Kadi Nakamura and Reece Richardson — for keeping Kalaheo and its scoring tandem of Hannah Cabral (10 goals this season) and Mia York (7) in check.

"Our backs have been solid all year. They're all young and I think the amount of pressure that we were facing in the last 15 minutes when (York) moved up into the offense, it definitely put so much more pressure on us and Alysha got injured too during that time, so we were just trying to frantically get the ball away," Murakami said. "I mean, at that time it wasn't about playing nice soccer. It was just playing disciplined and making sure that we took care of dangerous players, because they have two very good dangerous players up top and two center-midfielders that can make the game too so there's a lot of attacking power there; To keep them scoreless is huge for us."

Both teams will represent the OIA in the D2 state tournament in two weeks.