Less than eight minutes into the Class 2A state championship game at Weidner Field, the Vail Mountain boys soccer team found itself in a familiar position.
A loose ball off a goal kick caught keeper Mason Geller, who had stopped the initial shot, out of position. Abeanezer Getchew of Lotus capitalized on the opportunity, sending the ball to the back of the net, giving Lotus an early lead.
Vail Mountain, however, had been behind before this season. It was part and parcel of playing a schedule loaded with 3A and 4A programs. With that experience and confidence in hand, the Gore Rangers fought back to win 2-1 and claim their program's first state championship.
“We’ve been behind a lot of times this season. We played some strong teams,” Vail Mountain coach Kevin Ives said. “The guys knew to stick with the plan. They did, and we got the goals we needed.”
The Lotus goal served to awaken Vail Mountain from an early-game funk. Though the first eight minutes were played almost exclusively in the Gore Ranger end, that would change in the aftermath of the early strike. A sense of urgency that had been missing early became part of the Vail Mountain psyche from that point forward.
The Gore Rangers started getting to balls first. They began to put bodies on Lotus attackers before they could get into position to do any more damage. More than anything else, the Gore Rangers started attacking the Lotus defense.
It would, however, take 54 more minutes of play before Vail Mountain could puncture the inner reaches of the Lotus defense. It’s one thing to play most of the game in the other team’s end of the field. It’s another to fire serious shots on goal.
The turning point of the contest was, once again, a rebound off a first shot that put the keeper, this time Fernando Alcantar-Barajas of Lotus, out of postion. From the right side of the net, Javier Braun seized on the opportunity of a wide-open net and tied the game at 1-1.
The rumble of Vail Mountain momentum became a roar.
Two minutes later, Rutley Heinemann of Vail Mountain negotiated his own breakaway, dodged his way past the last Lotus defender, and put the Gore Rangers up 2-1.
From that point forward, it would be a matter of staving off Lotus’s late rushes aimed at bringing the game back into a tie. Wave after wave of fresh bodies off the Vail Mountain bench helped keep the defense fresh and the ball mostly well away from Geller. Geller also added one nice save in the waning minutes of the game.
It was a much closer contest that the two teams had played back on September 2, when Vail Mountain beat Lotus, 4-0.
“They were missing a couple of their top players for that one,” remarked Heinemann. “We knew we’d face a tougher team this time around.”
Those two goals in the last 20 minutes brought a state championship home to the Vail Mountain School. It was a nice dividend, paid in full, of all those games against 3A and 4A programs that helped make the battle-tested Gore Rangers champions.