As Thursday night’s Ignacio-at-Bayfield soccer match became a Cinco de Mayo classic, it sometimes grew difficult to tell which side was playing as if their postseason hopes were in jeopardy.
“We talked at the beginning of the game about the playoff … implications,” said BHS head coach Chris Zoltowski. A 3-1 win Tuesday at Alamosa kept the Lady Wolverines in Class 3A’s top 32 teams in terms of RPI and made the second go-round with Ignacio a must-win. “And it just lit a fire under them; they came out – we’re not much of a first-half team — firing on all cylinders in that first half.”
Shining under Wolverine Country Stadium’s Senior Night lights, Emaliah Sawyer not only got the scoring started just six minutes in, but then assisted on sophomore Preslie Wagner’s subsequent goal within the same minute. Wagner then returned the favor in the ninth minute, and Sawyer increased Bayfield’s lead to 3-0.
Fans who missed BHS’ narrow 3-2 win at IHS Field back on April 13, however, found out that score, unusually close in the teams’ head-to-head history, wasn’t a fluke. Lady Bobcat junior Harmony Reynolds capitalized on a 13th-minute takeaway near goalkeeper Annie Fusco to put IHS on the scoreboard.
“We’re not used to playing on a grassy field; we’re used to turf, and so that kind of kicked us in the butt,” Reynolds admitted. “But I feel pretty good. I mean, I wasn’t expecting to lose, but we tried.”
Full-throttle from the outset, BHS freshman Sydney Rey struck back in the 20th and 25th minutes, and Bayfield took a four-goal lead into halftime – during which seniors Sawyer, Fusco, Jamaica Garza and Mattie Moore were commemorated.
“Sydney’s phenomenal; her footwork is just crazy, and she’s starting to become a leader on this team,” Zoltowski said.
“They got those first couple goals on us pretty quickly. You could tell we were shaken; we were kind of scrambling and trying to figure it out,” IHS head coach Alisha Gullion said. “Then they got a couple more in on us, but our girls then kind of settled – for probably, like, the last 15 minutes of the half – down, started connecting passes, started playing like they know how.”
“And then after that it was our game.”
Junior Autumn Sage led an improved defensive effort to keep the ball away from goalie Trinity Strohl, reportedly credited with 35 stops two days earlier in a 9-0 home loss to Telluride. The Lady Bobcats survived several scares from the Sawyer-Wagner-Rey triumvirate, as well as a long-range threats from bomber Garza, before Reynolds zipped a penalty kick over Fusco’s fully extended arms in the 69th minute.
A 73rd-minute Reynolds shot, redirected off a BHS defender attempting to block it and into the goal, brought Ignacio back to 5-3. Zoltowski then swapped in Garza, benched for quite some time with a bum left ankle, for Fusco.
“It was awesome to give Annie the opportunity to play field as well; I know that she’d wanted to and, at first, coach wasn’t going to let her because he wanted her to get a shutout,” Garza said. “But since they already had two in, then got that third near the end, he wanted … to give her the opportunity to score.”
Fusco wouldn’t score, but neither would Ignacio the rest of the way and BHS (9-6, 3-3 3A Southwest) kept its season alive.
“They were fired up the second half, fought hard until the very last second,” Gullion said. “For a lot of people, a 0-9 loss against Telluride is, like, devastating. But for us … we didn’t get mercy-ruled, and it was like, ‘Let’s take on Bayfield!’ Each game we get a little bit better.”
Unofficially, Fusco made seven saves on 10 shots on goal; Strohl stopped nine of 13.
“They knew the level of excitement, so they all stepped up … and you could see they all pushed a little extra hard tonight. It was great to see,” Zoltowski said.
“I’m feeling pretty happy,” Moore said. “I think the team has come such a long ways; we’ve improved so much, and as a team have become such a close family. It’s really important to me to see that they’re going to have a chance at the playoffs.”
The Lady Wolverines will have to wait a while longer to know their fate, but Zoltowski doesn’t mind.
“We weren’t going to have practice anymore,” he said. “But now they’re excited; they’re ready to go back to training and we’re going to continue on. We’ll keep moving off what we did tonight, be ready, and find out Monday.”
Ignacio (2-12, 2-5 2A SWL) will wrap up an underrated campaign at 1 p.m. Saturday in neutral Gunnison against 10th-ranked Crested Butte (8-5, 5-2).
