COLORADO SPRINGS — Under different circumstances, Lucia Spungin would not have been standing over the ball with her team’s championship dreams in the balance.
A lot didn’t go right Tuesday night for the Evergreen Cougars, but the defending Class 4A girls soccer champions found just enough resolve to ward off Windsor, 4-3, in a penalty shootout at Switchbacks Stadium.
Evergreen began the night without one of its best players. The Cougars trailed 1-0 in the second half. They trailed again, 2-0 and 3-1, during penalty kicks.
It ended up being another incredible season, but they certainly had to dig deep and earn it.
“It was a little scary, I’m not going to lie,” Spungin, a senior, said. “I will say we didn’t let it get to our heads. I’m really proud of the team for staying so confident.”
Evergreen, the top seed in 4A, had won 14 straight matches. The Cougars had allowed one goal in the past nine.
This night could have been a coronation. Instead, it was a rugged grind.
Junior Stella Johnson scored in the sixth round to seal the victory, but the work to get there was full of resilience. The Cougars were missing junior Nadia Leunig, who had scored the lone goal in a 1-0 season-opening win against Windsor and the lone tally in a 1-0 overtime victory in the quarterfinals.
Because Leunig wasn’t available, Spungin was her replacement. When it was her turn, Evergreen was down 3-1 in the fourth round. It was score or go home.
“I had thought about it a little bit, but not nearly as much as some of the other players,” Spungin said. “One of my best friends and my co-captain, Nuala Hart, really calmed me down. She gave me a big hug and said, ‘You got this. Deep breaths.’ Then I went up there and buried it.
Hart was up next, and again, it was score or the season would end in heartbreak. The senior didn’t miss, which got Evergreen to the sixth round and set up Johnson for the heroics.
In between, sophomore goalkeeper Avery Mahnken exacted a bit of revenge. Windsor senior goalie Leah Bacon was the Wizards’ fifth shooter. She scored a PK goal last season in a 4-1 win for Windsor against Evergreen.
Mahnken denied her counterpart, who is committed to play at South Dakota State, this time around.
“I felt very proud of myself there,” Mahnken said. “It’s nerve-racking when it comes down to PKs for a goalie. When you do get the ball, it feels euphoric.”
Just getting to the PK shootout was a challenge for Evergreen. The Cougars may have been the No. 1 seed, but third-seeded Windsor was also rolling with 11 straight wins and had outscored its previous state tournament competition 16-1.
The Wizards controlled the ball in the first half, and junior Braely Martinez gave them a deserved advantage. Evergreen adjusted the adjustment of not having Leunig, and the Cougars grabbed control for just long enough to find an equalizer. Sophomore Elle Buenning, who had a long night chasing a couple of Windsor’s speedy midfielders, got on the end of a corner kick to even the score.
This was Evergreen’s fourth state title. The first two came in the previous century. There will be plenty of returning firepower next season, but the lessons from a long Tuesday night in May could be just as valuable.
“It’s just teammates who care for each other, teammates who have resiliency and teammates who believe in each other,” Evergreen coach Peter Jeans said. “They outplayed us for many portions of that game. We just kept plugging away.
“We played them the first game of the year. I said, ‘I bet we play them in the finals, and they’re going to be better.’ So we had to keep getting better. You have to keep improving every single day. This team never took a single day off. That is the difference.”
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