HHSAA Girls Soccer
Pearl City upsets top-seeded Kamehameha in PKs


  



Thu, Feb 8, 2018 @ Waipio


Final/PK 1st 2nd OT 2OT PK Tot
Pearl City (15-2-0) 0 0 0 0 7 1
Kamehameha (14-2-1) 0 0 0 0 6 0

WAIPAHU — Naomi Takata was at her very best Thursday night and her team was the beneficiary. The victim? The No. 1 team in the land.

The junior goalkeeper recorded 10 saves and Soraya Santos made the game-winning penalty kick to lift No. 3 Pearl City past top-seeded Kamehameha in the late quarterfinal of The Queen's Medical Center/HHSAA Division I Girls Soccer State Championships Thursday night.

A crowd of 1,501 fans at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium saw the unseeded Chargers, the third-place finisher out of the Oahu Interscholastic Association, edge the Warriors, 7-6, in nine rounds of PKs.

Pearl City (14-1) will make its third consecutive appearance in the semifinal round. It will play No. 6 Kaiser at 7 p.m. Friday in the main stadium.

Interscholastic League of Honolulu champion Kamehameha (12-2-1) will play fourth-seeded King Kekaulike in a 3 p.m. consolation match on Field No. 7 Friday.

Takata was simply masterful between the posts, denying the Warriors and their prolific offense time after time.

"Today, she was all-state — all-world, actually," Chargers coach Frank Baumholtz III said. "She was absolutely fantastic."

Senior fullback Bree Fuller praised the work of Takata, who only became the full-time goalie shortly before the start of the season due to an injury to senior Coryn Perreira, which whom she was sharing time.

"I would say that Naomi did a wonderful job and she honestly saved us multiple times throughout the game," Fuller said.

Takata made a pair of spectacular saves just one minute into the second half. A corner kick by Kamehameha's D'awncey Jones-Black matriculated to Tausani Tavale, whose shot was deflected by Takata. Tatum Kauka had a chance at the rebound, but Takata made the sure-handed save.

About 20 minutes later, Takata did it again. This time deflecting a shot by Kailee-Rae Quartero off a cross from Jones-Black, and then punching away a point blank one-on-one chance by Leah Feato.

"I mean, that one ball where she went up, she hit it, somebody banged it back, she came back across and knocked that thing out — that was incredible. That was just totally incredible. It gave me pains just watching it," Baumholtz said of the play.

Takata said she gained confidence with each save throughout the night.

"I feel like I did, because I wasn't letting my team down," Takata said. "We were keeping it going, we were still getting shots off and we were just working so hard together."

After 80 scoreless minutes of regulation, the teams played two 10-minute overtime periods, but neither team was able to find the back of the net. The Chargers had a pair of golden opportunities go by the wayside in the first OT.

Daelenn Tokunaga chased down a long pass before dishing a through ball to Santos, who fired a shot from about 10 yards out, but it hit the right post. About four minutes later, Tokunaga got loose behind the Kamehameha defense and got off a right-footed shot that just missed wide left.

Santos said the near-goal gave her a boost of confidence.

"I knew I could get it in the goal, so I kept on trying and trying and once I hit the post, I thought it was going in and my heart dropped, but I thought, ‘oh, shoot, OK, we gotta get this in,'" Santos said. "I feel like we did great just working together and fighting back with everything we had."

After the initial round of five penalty kicks, the teams were tied at four apiece. Both squads made their sixth and seventh attempts, but missed their eighth.

Takata got a hand on the Kamehameha shot, which deflected off the crossbar and was no good.

"PKs are really hard. They're just so difficult, but I felt good going into them," Takata said. "I trusted my instincts and I just followed what I thought was right and I knew I could do it."

Chargers all smiles following Soraya Santos's game-winning penalty kick. CJ Caraang | SL    Purchase image

However, Pearl City hit the left post with its ensuing attempt to send it into a ninth round of PKs.

The Warriors' shot missed wide left, before Santos made her way to the penalty spot.

"I was thinking that there were a lot of things on my shoulders right now, but then I was like, ‘What am I talking about? We practice PKs all the time at practice. Just get it in the back of the net,' " said Santos, a freshman forward.

Santos made good on her shot, finding the middle of the net, just over the outstretched arms of Kamehameha goalie Kendal Stovall, who made three of her four saves before halftime.

The Warriors certainly had their chances offensively. They registered 12 shots on goal — eight of them in the second half — and had seven corner kicks to Pearl City's one.

It was just the second time that they have been shut out this season.

"Defensively, we played a four-back, but we made sure that all of our mids had all of their players in the middle and then in the second-half we changed our system so we could always have one person open," Fuller said.

It was a slight deviation from the Chargers' normal defensive structure.

"We changed our defense from our normal, what we played all year long," Baumholtz said. "We just did a little adaptation, a little kind of like flow-of-the-game situation and it worked out really well because we covered everybody we needed to, we shut their star down and I can't believe we passed that goal."

Pearl City, which was coming off a 4-1 win over Konawaena on the Big Island Monday, played without star Sunshine Fontes, who is traveling with the U-17 Women's National Team in Argentina this week. Despite being without her services for the game, Baumholtz said Fontes had a big part in the Chargers' preparation.

"We knew we were going to be without Sunshine, so we played in practice without her and then we played with her as the opponent — to try and shut her down — and she helped make us better," Baumholtz said. "That's why I told the kids, ‘You've got to be proud of the kids that didn't play. They're the ones that made us this good. If we didn't have them we would not be this good.' Sunshine, to her credit, she embraced that role, and that's hard to do when you're that good."

It was the Chargers' third straight victory, while the Warriors had their six-game win streak snapped.

Pearl City will try to return to the state final for the second time in three seasons. It defeated Baldwin for its fifth state championship in 2016.

"We don't want to let our school down, we don't want to let our parents, our supporters down — we're here to win it," Takata said.

The Chargers and Cougars last met on Jan. 30, 2015 in an OIA consolation game. Pearl City won that game by a score of 6-4.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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