MISSOULA — After claiming its first Western AA championship in 14 years earlier this month, the Missoula Sentinel girls soccer team seized a third-straight berth in the playoff semifinals Saturday. The Spartans scored 90 seconds into their match with Billings Skyview and held on for a 1-0 victory in front of a large crowd in sunny Missoula. Sentinel (13-2) will host Bozeman Gallatin (11-2-2) on Tuesday at 3 p.
m. with a chance to play the Saturday championship at home on the line. The difference between the Spartans and Falcons was a well-executed corner kick just as the teams were working up a sweat.
"It was a great corner kick from Teya (Lochridge) and Reece (Rosenbach) got her body on it and hit it back and I just finished it," said Sentinel sophomore Rose Richmond, who was credited with her team-high ninth goal of the season. "We knew it was going to be a pretty close game today. We felt the pressure not to get cocky and just think we were going to come out on top.
It's really great to have fans and the support we did today. I think it helps." The fact Sentinel scored its only goal off a corner kick was no accident, according to coach Dan Lochridge.
"We work on corners a ton and it was pretty much how we planned it, minus the melee before the ball actually went in," Lochridge said with a grin. "You work on those things and you like to see them happen. "When we got that first corner kick, I had a feeling it might go in.
Then it goes in and I was stoked. Then I was really .
