Steele Canyon High School boys soccer coach Justin Johnson readily admits “it’s been a crazy week” when talking about
the recent exploits of his charges.
Make that a crazy last couple weeks.
The Cougars won the school’s first San Diego Section boys soccer championship by defeating the top-seeded Hilltop Lancers, 3-0, in the Division III final on Feb. 24 at
Patrick Henry High School.
The CIF championship game victory automatically qualified the
team for the Southern California regional championship tournament starting the following week.
Steele Canyon competed in the Division IV regional bracket that consisted of three rounds.
The Cougars received the No. 2 seed in the intimate (and elite)
eight-team bracket and kicked off regional play with a 2-1 victory against visiting Quartz Hill in the
quarterfinals on March 1.
Johnson called the matchup a “great game.” “We went down 1-0 just before halftime and it was the first time we had been down in our last
eight games,” Johnson said. “Our halftime talk was focused around staying together as a team. We’ve been resilient all year, and now we needed to draw on that if we wanted to advance. The boys came through with a pair of goals in the second half.”
Cole Cederwall tied the game and then Austin Moore, the
team’s leading scorer on the season and with two goals in the
section final, scored the gamewinner.
From there the Cougars advanced to the semifinal game on
March 3 against the third-seeded Crawford Colts, the reigning Division V San Diego Section champions who were having a recordbreaking season of their own.
The Colts, riding a humongous 23-match unbeaten streak, carried a 20-2-4 record into the semifinal after defeating sixth-seeded Artesia, 3-2, in overtime in the quarterfinals.
Steele Canyon emerged with another 2-1 victory to remain in
title contention.
“We knew this was going to be an incredibly intense game,”
Johnson said. “They were very talented and have a great fan
base that would travel well given the close proximity. We played some great defense and some phenomenal saves from Alex Shields to keep us in the game until we broke out with a couple goals.”
Victor Carlos scored in the first half for the host Cougars while
Cederwall scored what would prove to be the game-winning
goal in the second half.
The Cougars saved their most dramatic — and rewarding — moment for last in last Saturday’s regional championship game against eighth-seeded Los Angeles King/Drew.
Erik Rosales rescued the hosts from a potential runner-up finish with a late goal to send the match into overtime. From there, it was a nerveracking finish as the game finished tied 1-1 through extra time and entered the shootout tiebreaker phase.
Shields stopped one spot kick while Danny Medina, Moore,
Ashton Cederwall, Shields and Rosales all converted their shots
for a 5-4 tiebreaker win. Rosales had the goal to send
the game into overtime and then supplied the game-winning penalty kick in the tiebreaker.
“What an incredible game,” Johnson underscored. “There was a little bit of everything from wind to rain, scoring in the last minute of stoppage time and then PKs. Credit to King/Drew — they capitalized when they were with the wind in the second half which was something that we wanted to do in the first half but just couldn’t find the net.
“And credit to our guys who just never stopped fighting. We talk about perseverance and resilience as something we want to embody as a program, and they lived it tonight. I’m so proud of them.”
The Cougars climaxed their season with a final 20-4 record while King/Drew, which toppled top-seeded Montclair (2-1 in the quarterfinals) and fifth-seeded El Segundo Wiseburn-Da Vinci (1-0 in the semifinals), finished its otherwise own spectacular season 16-11-1.
