5A Girls Soccer: Fossil Ridge Wins Overtime Thriller for Second Straight Title
By Tracy Renck
Photo: Rob White
Fossil Ridge won its second-consecutive girls soccer 5A state championship with a dramatic goal from Reese Morgan with five seconds left in the first overtime, propelling the SaberCats to a 2-1 win over Mountain Vista on a rainy Wednesday night at Weidner Field.
“I glanced up at the clock, and I think there was 18 seconds left and I saw Becca (Burke) flying down the right side and I thought I could get one more shot and it went in,” said Morgan, a senior captain. “It is unreal. I can’t believe it. It is an honor to come here once and it is an honor to win here once and to win here twice is unbelievable.”
Fossil Ridge (18-1-1) finished its magical season on a five-game winning streak, including a semifinal win over Castle View (2-1). Now, the SaberCats are two-time state champs, their only two girls soccer state titles in the school’s history.
“Talent doesn’t win,” Fossil Ridge coach Cyrus Salehi said. “What wins is culture, grit and selflessness. Don’t get me wrong, we bring a high quality Division I soccer experience to them. They get high quality training. They get a high quality professional experience but what they buy into, the secret sauce is that we are just a gritty, scrappy, hungry, selfless team. We have no egos. We do not care who gets the limelight.
“We don’t have freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, we have a team and these girls bought in three years ago and since then we went 12-1 in the playoffs. It is crazy. Just awesome work what these girls have done.”
Mountain Vista (14-3-1) is no stranger to girls soccer success, winning state five times in 2005, 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2024. The Golden Eagles had won 10 games in a row before Wednesday, including a 1-0 victory over Valor Christian in the semis.
Fossil Ridge wasted no time in getting its offense rolling as the freshman Burke knocked in a goal less than 90 seconds into the game.
The first half saw just Burke’s goal stand alone, and it looked like Kylie Kephart was going to stretch Fossil’s lead at the 36:30 mark of the second half, but her rocket boot was stopped by Vista goalie Molly Gaffney.
Vista was pressing the action for nearly the entire second half, and when a handball was called in the box the Golden Eagles were awarded a free kick. Emersyn Linder seized the moment ,smashing the ball into the back of the net past the right of goalie Olivia Rice to tie the game at 1-all with 16:17 remaining.
“Everything we drew up for this game, we did about only half of it,” Salehi said. “We were frustrated at halftime. The girls knew they were not following our game plan. We couldn’t build, we couldn’t connect and we were giving them the middle third. We weren’t finding pockets to play in which they gave us. To their credit, they capitalized and they were scrappy and tied it up.
“But once they scored, what was the momentum of the rest of the game? We got punched in the mouth and it woke us up and we won the game.”
