4A Girls Soccer: Evergreen Earns First State Championship Since 1997

COMMERCE CITY – For the first time since 1997, Evergreen girls soccer is a state championship club.

On Tuesday night at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, the 14-seeded Cougars (14-5-1) won, 2-0, over No. 12 Lutheran (13-5), in the Class 4A state title match. The Cougars finished runner-up in 2017, 2019 and 2021, and this season’s drought-stopping championship is now the program’s third overall.

“It was just pure joy and happiness,” Evergreen sophomore Nadia Leunig said. “We love our seniors, so we’re really glad that we could just do this for them one last time. It’s super special and it’s even more special because girls lacrosse just won a state championship too.”

Leunig scored with 53 seconds left in the first half to put the Cougars on the scoreboard with her team-leading 18th goal of the season. Her icebreaker sent the Cougars into halftime with a confidence-building 1-0 lead.

“I was so stressed out the entire first half because everything kind of settled on me,” Leunig said. “It was such a close game, zero-zero, last minutes of the half. But once I put one away, I was just kind of like, OK, take a deep breath. Work’s not over but it’s a good buffer to have going into the second half.”

Leunig was also named Sportswomen of Colorado’s Most Outstanding Player of the Game after the final whistle.

Neither team could score for a long stretch until Cougars senior Gretchen Lynch found the back of the net in the 73rd minute to give the Cougars a two-goal lead that would hold up until the end of the game.

Entering the postseason as the No. 14 overall seed, the Cougars finished the season on a six-game win streak and allowed just five goals in five games throughout the 2024 postseason.

“I think the approach was just to play better each day and to practice better each day, and to work on the things that we weren’t good enough at,” Evergreen head coach Peter Jeans said. “Early in the year, we had a lot of difficult, testing games that showed us what we weren’t good enough at. We just learned from it and I felt like every game we got better. The hardest game to win is the last one. So, to win that last one shows how far they’ve come.”

This is the second season in a row that Lutheran, which is still chasing its first-ever girls soccer championship, has finished runner-up.