4A girls soccer: Rhodes’ diving save in PKs delivers Northfield first-ever title

COMMERCE CITY – In front of a huge crowd at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on Tuesday night, freshman Chloe Rhodes found herself starting down one of the biggest moments in Colorado high school soccer history.

Through all of regulation, two overtime periods and four rounds of penalty kicks in the Class 4A girls soccer state championship game against top-seeded Windsor, the No. 7 Northfield girls soccer team had a one-score advantage up 5-4 in penalty kicks. With a save, Rhodes had a chance to finally clinch a victory for the Nighthawks and give her program its first-ever state championship.

Diving to her left, Rhodes made the save of a lifetime that crowned the Nighthawks state champions for the first time.

“Honestly, it was a really stressful moment given the fact that our team just had a goal saved,” Rhodes said. “When they blew the whistle, I was just super excited. It’s a really nice experience since I’m an incoming freshman and all the relationships that I got from playing this year. It was amazing.”

After making the game-winning save, Rhodes paused for a moment and looked to the referee and then her teammates charged towards her from midfield. She later admitted she was so focused on the that initially, she didn’t realize that she had just won the state championship for the Nighthawks.

Still, it was a stressful moment at the end of a game in which Windsor had mostly controlled throughout but couldn’t find the back of the Northfield net despite several promising chances. Windsor junior goalkeeper Leyah Scott, who anchored a Wizards defense that allowed just three goals in the postseason, had also just made an incredible diving save of her own moments earlier that kept the Wizards’ hopes alive.

“Massive, massive moment,” Northfield head coach Daniel Nestor said. “Tip of the cap to Windsor. They are a well-trained, well-coached, skillful team and they gave us every ounce that we could handle. There were moments when it looked like the dam was going to break, and we held tight and we fought. We made some adjustments to address some of their key players and it became a war of attrition after a while.”

Nestor added that the Nighthawks, while they were battling to hold off the hard-charging Wizards all game long, drew an immense amount of energy from the large fan section that made the short trip from a school less than a mile away from the stadium. And when it was all over the Northfield girls stood on the field with a tremendous sense of pride in bringing a state championship trophy back to Northfield to match the one their boys program won for its first time in the fall.

“It’s been incredible,” Nestor said. “On the boys side, Jason Keever has done such an incredible just with his commitment to the program and his commitment to the community and the school. It was our turn for the girls team and when we started in December with voluntary workouts, that commitment was there as well and it was contagious. Once the season started to really unfold, it became clear how far we could go. From the community to the school to these players, I could not be more proud of the community as a whole.

“The turnout tonight was ridiculous. They’ve traveled well with us all season and they traveled with us all throughout our playoff matches. That’s a part of the foundation and the fabric as well. Academics comes first and athletics are secondary, but the community comes out and supports us. The girls live around here. They drive by this stadium every day and they train on the fields outside of this stadium. So, we knew that if we got to Dick’s, this would be a home match for us.”