Stoneman Douglas’ girls soccer team sees state championship hopes fade in closing minutes

Ten minutes.

That’s all that separated the Stoneman Douglas girls soccer team from their first appearance in a state championship game in 15 years.

And then it all went south.

Taking on No. 4 nationally-ranked St. Johns Creekside in a Class 7A state semifinal, Douglas played 70 great minutes of terrific soccer and appeared about to pull off a mild upset. Then came those last 10 minutes when Creekside scored not once but twice to pull out a 2-1 victory on Thursday afternoon at Spec Martin Stadium.

The win advances Creekside (15-1-2) to the 7A state title game on Saturday at 4 p.m. where the Knights will be looking for their second state title in the last three years when they take on Boca Raton.

For the Eagles? They were just left with a case of the “what-could’ve-beens” as they trudged off the field with heads drooping for the long bus ride home.

“Just super proud of my girls,” said veteran head coach Laura Rountree. “We were up against a very good team today and our girls did everything that we tried in terms of executing our plan, from their effort and their heart and just fighting to the end and.....that’s just the way soccer goes sometimes, a real heartbreaker.”

With a front passing through the DeLand area, wind was a definite factor on this day and the Eagles enjoyed the advantage in the first half. Most of the action took place on the Douglas side of the field and only great saves by Creekside keeper Hailey Smith on a pair of breakaway one-on-one chances by Layla Segelnick and Gianna Rizzo kept the game scoreless.

Douglas finally broke through 17 minutes before halftime when Segelnick took a long wind-aided punt by keeper Ella Stevens that bounced high over Creekside defenders and she was one-on-one with Smith. The two slid arriving at the ball at the same time but Segelnick won the battle this time, getting her foot underneath Smith to knock it home.

“My keeper punted it and her punts go really long and especially with the wind behind us and I got as far up as I could,” said Segelnick of her goal. “It bounced over one girl, I got a one-touch on it, made it past their last defender and then managed to just beat their keeper to the ball.”

When the teams switched sides in the second half, the Eagles now had the wind in their face and thus quality offensive chances virtually disappeared. Even though Creekside enjoyed the wind, terrific defensive play by the Douglas back line of Lilly Conn, Alessia Frenquellucci and Jackie DeStefano kept the Knights from really getting any kind of quality chances and it looked like Segelnick’s lone goal just might hold up.

Then came those fateful last 10 minutes.

It started when Douglas committed a foul at midfield. Normally that’s too far to dump a ball all the way down in front of the net. But with the wind, Payton Dorsett was able to do just that. The ball took one bounce and as Stevens came out to make the save, Lily Paisant got there first and headed the ball over her head into the net with 9:33 left tying the game.

Just over four minutes later, after a ball got dumped down low into the corner, Braelyn McMillan was able to hit a perfect centering pass to Alanna Maki who found herself all alone in front against Stevens and buried it into the bottom left corner of the net with 4:59 left.

Rizzo and Segelnick pushed as hard as they could in the last five minutes but, with the headwind not helping, the Eagles (15-2-2) just could not get any kind of serious look at the net.

“It was definitely harder to create anything offensively in the second half because the wind would knock the ball down quicker,” Segelnick said. “We tried to get out wide more so we could contain possession......it just didn’t go our way. We did everything we could but not everything always goes the way you want. We played so well for almost the entire game but just couldn’t finish it off.”

Rountree’s teams ruled the state in girls soccer once upon a time when she led the program to five consecutive titles from 2003 to 2007 and had last made a state final appearance in 2009.

“Soccer’s a goofy game, it can go either way and we were on the bad end of it today,” Roundtree said. “That’s a great team on the other side and I couldn’t have asked more from my girls today. I’m heartbroken for them.”