Sure as shootin'
By NATE MACZUZAK/Journal sports writer
Most of those were more than 140 years ago.
Saturday’s West Virginia Secondary Schools Athletic Association girls soccer
state championship produced another epic struggle, as Jefferson went to
toe-to-toe with defending state champion Parkersburg, taking the West Virginia
title contest through regulation, two mandatory overtime periods, two sudden
death periods and 13 penalty kicks to claim the Eastern Panhandle’s
first-ever state championship 2-1 in possibly the greatest final ever.
“I’ve been involved in some shootouts, but never to go that far,”
“I didn’t watch any. I have never watched a penalty kick that a player of mine
has taken. It just has always been a thing with me. I have a player tell me
what happened. But I watched all of theirs.”
It was the first girls final to go to a shootout, and the 13 PKs represented the most in any championship game.
“It was a tough game to lose,”
It was a satisfying win for the Cougars, who got sent home last season by the
Big Reds in the state semifinals.
“(It’s) sweet revenge,” captain Tiffany Banks said. “Last year, I think the two
teams that played on Friday should have been in the state championship.”
This year,
“I was pretty confident because we had practiced so long, and I was getting
pretty good at reading players when they were taking PKs,”
Cooper said. “So I wasn’t really nervous.”
“That was (Logston’s) second time through, and I saw
that she had gone to my right the first time. So the second
time, I didn’t want to guess because I didn’t want her to try to fake me out and
go to the left. I just saw her foot planted going to my right, so I went
that way.”
Shaffer hid her emotions well and appeared to be business as usual on the
ensuing penalty kick, notching her second of the shootout and
“I couldn’t breathe whatsoever,” Shaffer said. “I was so nervous. There was all
this pressure on me. When it went in, I was so happy.”
“It is just a great credit to the shooters,” Lockney said. “I have never seen a
shootout go that far. To have all those girls, from both teams, to step up and
have the courage to make great shots, wow... If you’re a fan, it doesn’t get
any better than that. If you’re a coach, you just die on the sidelines.”
“We played as hard and as well as we could for 100 and however many minutes it
was,” Lockney said. “I just want to recognize
Trailing by one goal in the second half, the Cougars made a game-changing
decision, moving starting wingback Katie Perry to forward.
“I looked at my assistant coach Kaity Myers and said,
‘At what time do we need to go to a
It took nine minutes. Katie Perry’s twin sister, Jenny, found her streaking
down the right wing, and she tied the game with a hard volley past
“Honestly, I don’t really remember it,” Katie Perry said. “I remember the ball
coming in, and it ended up bouncing over a defender and bounced my way. I was
able to put it in the back of the goal. It was the greatest goal I’ve scored
all season. I knew coach Bache was putting me up there to score, so I knew I
had to go up there and play hard and do my best to put the ball in the back of
the net.”
Bache then moved Perry back to wingback. The Cougars’ defense shut down the Big
Reds over the next 41 minutes to take the game into the shootout.
“We’ve gone into overtime, we normally always come out with a goal,” Logston said. “I thought we were going to get one.
“We didn’t feel like we created enough shots in our previous game yesterday. We
went out with that mission: to create more. And I thought we did that. We are
two good teams, and sometimes it just comes down to inches. All day long, it
came down to a few inches.”
Graham nearly gave the Big Reds the victory, getting a hand on
For
After Cooper’s save on No. 13, Logston’s emotions
rendered her unable to move.
“Oh, yes, every practice for the past two weeks,” Bache said of working on PKs. “I was happy about that. I told them once you get to
this level it can end in that fashion. It was funny, I was talking to my
assistant coach coming here, and I said, ‘Kaity, if
we go to a shootout, we’re going to take it.’”
Shaffer proved Bache right.
“It is as close as you can get to winning the game and not winning,” Lockney
said. “Everybody hates to lose that way, but they don’t mind winning that way.”
Lockney would get no argument from Bache afterward.
“We are just so elated. We came from nowhere,” Bache said. “It was interesting, some official came up and said that people were
asking where