Fallon's Rebecca Mills, right, dives against Truckee's Hannah Seppi.
The Greenwave varsity girls soccer team ended their season after a 3-1 victory against the Lowry Buckaroos on Thursday and a narrow 2-1 loss to the Truckee Wolverines on Friday in the D1-A playoffs.
Fallon ended with a record of 8-4-4 in D1-A and 10-6-4 overall, while Lowry was knocked out at 7-7-2 in D1-A and 9-8-2 overall.
The Lady Wave finished this season with 47 goals, 12 of which belonged to Rebecca Mills, the lead scorer for her team. Meyers, Kailey Davis, and Leilano Otuafi followed behind Mills, all tied at seven goals for the season. Kaycee Mulder had the most goals saved at 89, followed by Kyndra Leary at 23.
The loss to Truckee was particularly hard on the Wave after they won their quarterfinal match against the Buckaroos, who ended their season as the No. 5 seed just behind Fallon at 7-7-2 in D1-A and 9-8-2 overall.
Mills scored all three goals for the Wave during that match.
Fallon led 2-0 before the second half began with a tight defense and less than formulaic passing game.
The Buckaroos scored their only point early in the second half with a corner kick, but their chances to catch up were dwarfed when Mills scored for the Wave’s third.
“We were glad to get a matchup to (Lowry) because we lost to them in the regular season,” said coach Lance Lattin who mentioned that there was a discrepancy in the regular season match against Lowry that left an uneven feeling between the two teams. “We came to play this match, though, and we pretty much dominated the whole game. Rebecca Mills had a hatrick, scored three beautiful goals on her own, and Lowry had a couple of shots, but it was pretty one sided as far as the match goes.”
Fallon fought hard against Truckee, one of the top five teams in the league before the regionals, for a close loss after battling the Wolverines into overtime.
Despite the loss to Truckee, Lattin said he felt that the Lady Wave came prepared to that game.
“After the match (against Lowry) we kind of new we made some mistakes and that we needed play better, but we addressed that,” Lattin said. “There were a few changes we needed to make, mainly since Truckee is a possession game, but the girls still came in feeling good about themselves. I just feel that we peaked at the right time, and we went in confident that we could play with the No. 1 seed.”
Truckee’s first goal was an own-goal by Fallon into the Wave’s own goalpost after Truckee took a free kick.
The Wave’s only goal of the match came from Macy Meyers, which allowed the Wave to fight Truckee with their passing game until the end of the second half.
The brief glimpse of hope that came with overtime didn’t last though, since the Wave suffered another error in goal that let Truckee take the lead, 2-1, and end the match.
“When the match began, it was clear it was going to be a battle,” Lattin said. “I feel that the best way to encapsulate that game was to call it a long, hard battle. Every ball was a battle, every pass was a battle, both teams got shots on goal and had good saves. There was an atmosphere of intensity throughout the whole thing, and the girls really expected to win going in, we could tell.”
Lattin said that the girls played hard and well, frustrated Truckee, and forced them to the inside as they picked off their passing lanes very well compared to the first two times the Lady Wave played the Wolverines in the regular season.
“Overall it was a fantastic game,” Lattin said, “and we just didn’t have things go our way in the end.”