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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
ARGOS — The right upright was not the Culver girls soccer team’s friend against Manchester in a Class 1A, Sectional 36 quarterfinal at Argos Tuesday.
Freshman Ava McCune scored twice, and Eliana Andrzejewski and Alexis Gasanovas also scored, but Manchester rallied from a 4-0 deficit to pull off a shocking 5-4 win in penalty kicks over Culver in a Class 1A, Sectional 36 quarterfinal at Argos’ Eugene Snyder Field Tuesday.
Manchester’s Joanna Eberly tied the game 4-4 with 9:05 left in regulation when her low shot went off the fingertips of Culver goalkeeper Katie Schouten and into the net.
Neither team scored for the rest of regulation and two seven-minute overtime periods.
Manchester then outscored Culver 3-1 in penalty kicks.
Manchester went first in the shootout, and Ava Sautter converted her kick. Bre Hamilton then scored for Culver on her kick.
Round 2 featured a rare do-over. Schouten stopped Ava Baker’s kick, but officials ruled Schouten stepped forward too soon and granted Baker a rekick. This time, Baker steered her kick into the left side of the net.
Andrzejewski then hit the crossbar for Culver.
In Round 3, London Spangle scored for Manchester while McCune missed for Culver.
Schouten denied Samantha Shock in Round 4, but when Maddy Hamilton’s attempt sailed over the goal, the game was over, and Manchester celebrated at midfield.
“The second half came around, and we settled in, and we were trying to prevent them instead of us scoring ourselves,” Culver coach A.J. Neace said. “It’s always when you’re down, you’re the fighting dog. When you’re up, you’re kind of like, ‘OK, we’re on top. We don’t need anything.’ But they worked their butts off. Hats off to Manchester. They came out in the second half and dominated us.”
Culver finished 12-3-1. They also came into the 2023 sectional with two regular season losses and lost to Argos in the quarterfinals.
This marked the second time in three years Culver lost in the first round of the sectional on penalty kicks. They lost to Bremen in PKs in 2022.
Culver has not won a sectional game since 2021. They have never won a sectional title in girls soccer.
Culver scored first with 32:29 left in the half when McCune took a hit-ahead pass and sped ahead along the right side of the field. Manchester goalkeeper Cora Brown ran out from the net and deflected McCune’s shot, but Andrzejewski was running the left side and collected the loose ball. She did not squarely connect on the first rebound, but the ball spun back to her, and she scored from right in front of the net on her second try to make it 1-0.
Gasanovas, a freshman who runs the right side of the offensive zone, made it 2-0 when her low shot from 30 yards out evaded Brown and skipped by her with 26:12 left in the half.
Culver’s third goal started when Maddy Hamilton stripped Manchester’s Hanna Stout of the ball and sent a long pass to McCune, who sped into the box, stopped, waited for the defense to clear and then finished with her 44th goal into the left corner of the net past an outstretched Brown.
Culver led 3-0 with 7:18 left in the half.
Two minutes later, McCune scored again. The play started when Maddy Hamilton chipped a pass to McCune that sent her on the run to the net.
Brown stopped McCune’s first shot, but it deflected off McCune and floated into the net to make it 4-0.
“I thought we came out in the first half and dominated possession,” Neace said. “We had a couple that I thought we could have got there in that first half as well beside the four that we did, but they played their butts off in the first half.”McCune is tied for second in the state with 45 goals. No other freshman in the state has more than 28 goals. Neace compared McCune to both Giselle Villegas, the 2024 Culver grad who scored a school-record 49 goals last season, and a famous basketball player.
“I tell a lot of people that she reminds me a lot of Giselle,” Neace said. “When she got the ball, I can almost turn my back like Steph Curry and it’s going to go in. She’s one of those freshman phenoms that I love, and I hope that she can break Giselle’s record someday. … She’s going to be a force to be reckoned with in the next two to three years.”
Shock’s goal with 1:35 left in the half on a rebound made it 4-1. Campbell Bolinger and Sautter scored within the first seven minutes of the second half to make it 4-3.
McCune had a run down the middle of the field with 4:46 left, but her shot hit the right post.
McCune had a shot with 13 seconds left in regulation, but Brown got low near the right post to save it.
McCune took a punt from Schouten at midfield and raced to the box and took a shot that Brown saved with 13 seconds left in the second overtime. Andrzejewski couldn’t get enough foot on the rebound to direct it into the net, and Spangle cleared the zone just before the buzzer.
It was time for penalty kicks.
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