High school girls soccer: Maple Mountain survives quarterfinal nailbiter, advances to 5A state semis on PKs

Maple Mountain advanced to its second 5A semifinal in a row following an intense match against Northridge on Thursday.

The No. 3 seed Golden Eagles went 4-2 in penalty kicks after things were knotted up 1-1 at the end of regulation against the No. 6 seed Knights.

After a scoreless first half, Piper Hoyt scored a Maple Mountain goal two minutes into the second half, and thanks to elite defense from both teams, the score stayed 1-0 until just 14 seconds remained.

That’s when Northridge forward Abby Olsen drilled a kick to the far-left side of the net to tie the game — after 79 minutes and 46 seconds of nearly perfect defense from the Golden Eagles.

Maple Mountain coach Clif Swain didn’t have to say much to his players after the equalizer goal; the message was simple heading into overtime.

”Keep our heads high, play our game,” Swain said afterward. “We were playing well, so just continue playing our game, not to get down on ourselves, and just remember, stay with your mark and get chances up front.”

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The Golden Eagles’ defense took those words to heart. They clamped down and didn’t give up a goal in overtime, which was especially impressive because of the Northridge duo of star forwards Olsen and Sophie Sivulich, who entered Thursday with a combined 32 goals.

Swain trusted in his defense to stop the high-scoring duo. When asked about the plan to neutralize the forwards, he said, ”Honestly, we just said play our game. We didn’t call them out; we didn’t tell anyone specific to mark ‘em. We just said play like we’ve played. Our defense has done very well this year.”

On the other hand, Maple Mountain had a different approach to scoring goals this season. The Golden Eagles don’t have anyone on their team with over 10 goals. Instead, they have five players with three or more. Swain said this has been a focus all year:

”This year we really focused on finding the girl that has the best opportunity,” he said. “Don’t force it whenever it’s not the right opportunity. Some of the time it costs us a few things, but most of the time, they find the girl that’s open, and she puts it in.

“At the beginning of the year we were a little too frantic in the final third and were trying to go too direct, so we’re still working on getting better at it, but we’ve made some huge improvements.”

While Swain couldn’t name just one MVP for Thursday’s game, he highlighted the talented senior forward Sierra Jacobson. The leading goal scorer for Maple Mountain scored the first penalty kick and is excited to get back to Zions Bank Stadium and the semifinals.

”I feel really great,” Jacobson said, adding that working together in the midfield is something the team is working on. “It was a rough game, but we pulled through and got the win. I’m really excited.”

The Golden Eagles will face No. 2 seed Brighton in the semifinals next Tuesday after the Bengals beat Wasatch 2-0 on Thursday.