T-Wolves' moment again
Lake City’s Chloe Teets (4) celebrates her goal against Post Falls with Payton Barber in the 5A Region 1 championship game on Tuesday at Lake City High School. LOREN BENOIT/Press
LOREN BENOIT/Press Lake City’s Lexi Medina, right, deflects Bridget Rieken’s pass during the 5A Region 1 Championship game on Tuesday at Lake City High School.
COEUR d’ALENE — Somewhere in the 60th minute, Lake City coach Matt Ruchti yelled to his team to win each moment.
Done and done.
Lake City junior midfielder Chloe Teets opened the scoring on a kick from 30 yards out in the first half and Bridget Rieken capped the scoring on a free kick from 35 yards out in the second half, sending the top-seeded Timberwolves past the third-seeded Post Falls Trojans 2-0 in the 5A Region 1 girls soccer championship at the Irma Anderl Soccer Complex at Lake City High.
“After it went in, it was kind of a confidence booster that got us up to that next level,” Teets said. “(Coach) Matt (Ruchti) and I have been talking about getting Lilly (Scott) and I forward more and looking for those deep shots. And it was finally like we did it and it gave us some confidence.”
Lake City won its fourth straight regional title.
“We stuck to our game plan and it played out the exact way we thought it was going to play out,” Ruchti said. “We talked about it and the way they drop in (to the penalty area on defense) that our center mids would have an opportunity to have a big game. And Chloe had that moment today.”
Lake City (8-1-4) advances to the state 5A tournament and will face the fourth-place team from District 3 (Boise) next Thursday at Meridian High. It is Lake City’s eighth straight trip to state, which includes state titles in 2013 and 2016.
“I thought they definitely came out fast and we wanted to play faster,” Teets said. “From that start, we just wanted to come out and get forward and show that we’ve here to play and we’re going to keep it here and work hard. Post Falls fought hard and credit to them for getting here. We wanted to keep moving forward.”
Post Falls (4-8-3) will face the fifth-place team in a state play-in match on Saturday at Walker Field in Lewiston.
“We definitely came out flat,” Post Falls coach Steve Mills said. “And that’s an unfortunate thing because we played on our heels for the first half of the game. We finally decided to show our true colors that last 20 minutes, and that’s how we’ve been playing the last few weeks. Hopefully that’s the quality of play we can bring on Saturday. Our defense has been playing solid and been working hard of playing out of the back. But we were booting the ball up the field instead of trying to play it forward. If we can do that like we did in the last 30 minutes, we should be fine on Saturday.”
Lake City beat Post Falls 2-0 on Sept. 12 and the teams played to a 1-1 draw on Sept. 20.
“They have a hard game plan that’s hard to play against,” Ruchti said. “And they’ve done a great job with it. Their record doesn’t indicate how they’ve been playing. We knew it was going to be a battle because of the way they’ve been playing the second half of the season. Hats off to them, they’re on the upswing and they’re doing great things and it helps us in this league. We knew it was going to be a grind-it-out kind of game, so in our preparation, we had to be ready to play 80, 90 or 100 minutes of soccer. We knew and prepared for it. And they’ve done a great job of executing game plans in the second half of the season.”
First half — 1, LC, Chloe Teets (unassisted), 36:00. Second half — 2, LC, Bridget Rieken (free kick), 50:00.
Shots on goal — PF 1, LC 14.
Saves — PF, Maddie Grangaard 7; LC, Capi Halliday 1.