5A Girls Soccer: Fossil Ridge Wins First Soccer State Championship

COLORADO SPRINGS – Through scouting, Fossil Ridge coach Cyrus Salehi and his assistants believed a corner kick could lead to great things for their girls soccer team on Wednesday night – and that’s exactly what happened.

Teagan Myers followed the script beautifully knocking in a header in the 82nd minute, vaulting Fossil Ridge to a 1-0 win over Castle View to win the Class 5A girls’ state championship match at Switchbacks Weidner Field.

This was Fossil Ridge’s first girls’ soccer crown in school history.

“We worked on specific corner kicks specifically for today,” Salehi said. “Actually, we watched a lot of film, and we saw a corner kick that worked on them, so we copied it and used it today and it scored a goal for us. We scouted a lot and I’m so proud of them.

“Teagan was our target. We had framers who were on the outside and we had dogs running in who were decoys and Teagan was the one who was designed to put the ball on her head, and she buried it.”

Fossil Ridge capped its season for the memory books with a 15-4-1 record. Castle View ended its season with a 13-4-3 record. Castle View was trying to win its second girls state title in school history to go along with the one the volleyball team captured in 2017.

“It was a great game, and they were a great team but coming down to the last 10 minutes of the game I knew we needed to make a play and take advantage of every opportunity we could get,” said Myers, a senior. “I knew that corner (kick by Lily Wale) was probably not going to come again in the game, and I just had to make the most of it and at that point it was just being hungry for the goal. When it went in, I couldn’t even describe what I was feeling – euphoria basically.”

Fossil Ridge had just one shot on goal in the first half in what turned out to be a defensive battle as the evenly matched teams went to the locker room at intermission deadlocked at 0-0.

With 22:48 remaining in regulation, Castle View’s Adyson Kissinger found some space to the left of the goal but hooked her shot just past the goal.

Then, with 13:07 left, Fossil Ridge’s Wale sent a boot at the goal, but it went right into the arms of CV’s goalie Elly Bowers.

Castle View had a grand opportunity to tie the game with 6:28 remaining, but Fossil Ridge goalie Shay Masters denied the shot with an outstanding block.

“She (Masters) is such a key player, and she comes up big every game,” Wale said. “She came up big in the quarters, semis and today and to have her in the net is a safety net and anything coming her way is not going to go in.

“We definitely weren’t supposed to win this, so we came in really wanting to prove something to the whole state that we are the best in Colorado.”