Pirate Girls End Season With View Toward Playoffs

By GANNON HANEVOLD

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley High School Girls Soccer team ended regular season play last week with two final games against divisional opponents. With their playoff seed locked down going into the week, the games had no playoff implications, but the Pirates sought moral victories over rival opponents.

Moapa started off on Monday, October 22 with the final home game of the season against Chaparral. Earlier in the season, the Pirates defeated the Cowboys 4-0 on the road, in a performance that Coach Lisa Cornwall wasn’t fully satisfied with. This time around, the Pirates gave their coach plenty to celebrate.

Senior Ashlyn Western, in her last game on the MVHS home field, made the most of her nostalgic opportunity, with the team’s first goal coming off of a breakaway. Sophomore Makayla Baldwin added another to wrap up the first half at 2-0 in favor of the blue and gold.

The second half allowed for the home squad to explode onto the scoreboard. Peyton Schraft and Kaitlyn Hopkins would score the first two goals of the half for the Pirates, making it 4-0. Then, Italia

Bracamontes caught fire in the final minutes of the game. She scored back to back goals to make it 6-0, before showing up once again later and achieving a hat trick before final whistle.

Adding the final goal for the Pirates would be Sierra Staheli, becoming the fourth senior to score in this senior night evening for Moapa Valley.

Two days later the team travelled to play against the rival Boulder City. The Eagles had hopes for a spot in the playoffs on the line, while the Pirates went into the matchup with their playoff position safely secured.

After one half, the score was tied at zero. In the second half, despite plenty of attacking power by the Pirates, they were not able to finish a push up-field.

However, on the other side, the Eagles broke through on a fluke opportunity and capitalized to make it 1-0. The score would stay the same to the final whistle and the Pirates fell in their final regular season game.
“It was disappointing, because the girls played better than they have as far as tactically with each other,” said Cornwall. “We just couldn’t put the ball in the net.”

“This game leads us to a point where sometimes when you come off a loss, you come back with a little bit of fire,” Cornwall added. “We got that going for us now before playoffs.”

Meanwhile, the JV Pirates finished their season as well, losing just twice on the year. They defeated Boulder City 6-0 in their final outing. The future is just as bright as the present for Pirate girls soccer.

The varsity Pirates finished with a 6-3-1 regular season record and the third seed in the Sunrise division, despite defeating the top two seeds just weeks earlier. With such little parity in the southern region this season, anything could happen in the postseason.

Moapa’s first playoff matchup comes Wednesday at Bettye Wilson Park in Las Vegas against second seeded Pahrump Valley. The Trojans defeated the Pirates earlier this season 3-2.
“Of course, I go into every game thinking we have an opportunity to win,” Cornwall said. “It’s going to be hard, and we’re going to have to use a little strategy to get what we want out of it, but I think we can.”
Cornwall pointed out her team’s ability to make anything happen. “When the odds are against us, we tend to pull things out of somewhere,” she said. “It’s a little bit of Pirate magic.”