The build up in the Great Bend High School girls’ soccer game against Dodge City on Thursday at Cavanaugh Fields was almost as emotionally draining as the last-minute drop.
The Lady Panthers came back after trailing 4-1 in the second half to drive the game into double overtime before Araceli Osorio of Dodge City scored the golden goal with 1:26 seconds remaining in the game to give the Lady Demons a 5-4 win.
Osorio’s shot came from 38 yards away from the goal and barely cleared Lady Panthers goalkeeper Stephanie Lomas’ head.
“It is hard for (Lomas),” GBHS head coach Gus Prieto said. “She has to understand that that happens to every player. It happens to everybody. She’s a keeper and she needs to be good. I’m going to talk to her and she needs to be ready.
“She’s strong. She’s smart, so I’m sure she’ll be ready tomorrow.”
The Lady Panthers fall to 4-5-1, including 2-4-1 in the Western Athletic Conference.
Going into a second half where Great Bend had 10 shots, including seven on goal, the Lady Panthers were down 3-1 with the lone GBHS first-half goal coming from Berenice Prieto with the assist going to Kaylee Kerschner.
“You see that first goal in the first minute, that big mistake,” Gus Prieto said. “Losing like that really hurt. It is hard to start losing the game already. That is a big surprise for everybody.
“But after (our team) scored the first goal, they know they can do it. In the second half, we played amazing.”
The Lady Demons struck first at the 20:59 mark when Osorio took a pass in the center of the goalie’s box and beat Lomas, who had four saves and broke up several plays in the box.
Then the Lady Panthers clawed their way back into the game.
“We controlled the ball,” Gus Prieto said. “We start passing the ball. I said to them at half ‘we practice a lot everyday to play soccer. Let’s play soccer, please.’ We tried to control the ball, move the ball around and keep it.
“I said ‘if you guys get the ball, we have a big chance to win.’ And they did. We almost won.”
Jennifer Allende scored with 15:37 remaining in the game when Judith Carrera got a pass to her inside the box and past the defense. Allende, who finished the game with two goals, buried the ball into the bottom-right corner of the net.
Kerschner closed the gap to 4-3 with a goal at 10:41.
Dodge City’s Arely Torres struck a goal kick directly at Kerschner, who controlled it, dribbled into the box and beat Lady Demons goalie Marlene Valverde.
Allende drove the game into overtime with the tying goal with 2:55 remaining. Rubi Torres took a long shot from outside the box, but Valverde got her fists on the ball to drive it into the air.
Allende rushed into the box, got underneath the ball and headed it into the goal.
Dodge City scored three unanswered goals to start the game, including a goal just a little more than one minute into the game.
With the exception of a yellow card awarded to Christina Hernandez, who was one of the three Great Bend girls to get a red card and multiple-game suspension for a brawl between these two teams in Dodge City on Monday, April 11, the game on Thursday was mild-mannered. Dodge City also had three players with red cards and suspensions as a result of the brawl.
Great Bend travels to Salina South this afternoon.