Just when things couldn’t appear to be going any better for the Lady Miners Saturday afternoon — after all, THS had needed only nine minutes to build a 2-0 lead, which then held into halftime — they did.
Having heard, just like anyone else present at Judy Long Memorial Field, coaches Jose Orellana and Vidal Cubero shouting “Cabeza, cabeza!” whenever a Telluride player challenged a player from Bayfield High School for an airborne ball, sophomore Justus Tudor took full advantage of a gleaming opportunity to use her head for a header.
As well as rapidly reverse the flow of the match.
To BHS goalie Lana McKee’s horror, Tudor stood virtually unmarked, only a few feet from the goal line as senior Mary Lynch served a golden 54th-minute corner kick from McKee’s left deep into the goal box. Redirecting a bulls-eye past McKee, Tudor not only put the home side up 4-1 but did so barely two minutes after the Lady Wolverines got on the scoreboard.
“Yeah, that was surprising,” Tudor laughed afterward, noting that even during the team’s successful season it was a rare conversion. “One of my teammates crossed it in … and I was like, ‘I’d better not mess this up!’ It was so perfect, and the goal was open! It was pretty cool.”
In a way, the goal was representative of the Lady Miners’ will to handle business themselves rather than wait for CHSAA’s mathematical RPI formula to sort itself out on ‘Selection Sunday’ the next morning. And if it wasn’t, senior Ava Jodlowski’s long-range finish of sophomore Claudia Betz’s set-up in the 56th minute definitely was.
“Our last home game, and we actually passed the ball, played our game instead of the other team’s game,” said senior Whitney Wells, who iced the 6-1 victory with a 67th-minute penalty kick taken while wearing, ironically, her goalie jersey. “It was really nice to the team come together and bring home a win.”
“We saw each other’s moves and … felt it,” concurred senior Makenzie Hild. “We really just … clicked.”
And coming off Friday afternoon’s 7-0 “home” shutout of Ignacio at Down Valley Park in Placerville, Telluride (11-3-1 overall, 9-2-1 against the full 3A/2A Intermountain League, 6-1-1 against its 2A members) clicked too quickly for not only the guests but even supporters to truly believe.
Having recorded a first-half hat trick versus the 2A Lady Bobcats, senior Mary Lynch zipped a 20-yard free kick — resulting from a hand-ball infraction against 3A Bayfield — over a three-player ‘wall’ and McKee’s left shoulder for the vital icebreaker in only the second minute.
Hild then unquestionably stunned everyone in the ninth by chipping a volley over a small mob of players and landing it behind McKee, who’d initially ventured off her line to make a save on a THS corner.
“I just saw it and went for it,” she recalled. “Don’t really know what to say about it!”
“It was a little bit of a surprise, but I feel like we definitely could do it. We were prepared to,” Tudor said, regarding THS’ swift start, to which she added after intermission with a 46th-minute strike set up by a Lynch free kick. “I definitely think we came out a lot harder, knowing that we were playing Bayfield, and it really helped us.”
“Especially on our turf field … we were ready to come out firing,” agreed Wells, who’d netted the first — and thus winning — goal against IHS in the sixth minute as a field player, allowing Jodlowski to earn the shutout in net. “We woke up this morning and we wanted to give it our all.”
PLAYOFF BERTH
Hopes have now been fulfilled of receiving a prize in return: A first-round Class 2A State Tournament home match.
Having avoided an end-of-season collapse to remain high in the RPI index, Telluride earned the 12-team 2A bracket’s No. 6 seed, but encountered bizarre circumstances regarding No. 11 Colorado Springs School, which had been slated to visit Telluride on Tuesday.
“It’s really unfortunate,” THS Athletic Director Chris Murray said Monday afternoon, officially informed that his school would win uncontested, “because it seemed like they didn’t even want to try to make it work. Don’t know the deal there.”
Due to Advanced Placement exams scheduled to begin Monday at CSS, as well as an apparent —but, to teams and fans in Colorado’s distant southwest, not uncommon — lack of desire to leave the big city for San Juan country, the Lady Kodiaks elected to forfeit, finalizing their record at 6-8-0 and giving Telluride a free ride into the quarterfinals.
THS now will travel all the way to Littleton to face No. 3-seed Front Range Christian (9-6-0) on Friday.
“We’ve put in so much effort this season, so I think we deserve it,” Wells said, speaking on behalf of the Lady Miner seniors, still with at least one more match ahead of them. “Our senior year … it feels so great.”
“All the seniors…we’ve gotten so close to them,” said Tudor, on behalf of the underclassmen. “They really set the team, and when we joined we knew what we were in for. We knew that we were going to crush it.”
“I’m so excited,” Hild said. “We’ve worked so hard and I think we can do it! I really do.”
PLENTY OF AMMO
In their weekend sweep, the Lady Miners approached or exceeded 20 shots-on-goal against both Bayfield and Ignacio, and totaled nearly 70 attempts on McKee and IHS’ Bailey Wyatt (who played with a broken left middle finger). THS also worked for 13 total corner kicks while conceding just three.
MORE SCORES
Lynch’s goals versus Ignacio came in the 22nd (off defender Lonicia O’John’s back), 28th and 33rd minutes, and Telluride would lead 5-0 at halftime after a last-second goal by sophomore Rubie deLuca. Tudor and junior Hailey Byrom each netted in the second half to reach the proverbial “lucky” number 7.
