From Coach Ed Berberich:
The Lady Aces traveled to Centralia to face off against Salem in the first round of Regionals, losing 3-2 in overtime. The Lady Aces scored the first goal of the game in the 8th minute on a Maya Smith goal, assisted by Rylie Webb. Salem would later tie the game up 1-1 but the Lady Aces took the lead again in the 52nd minute on another Maya Smith goal, again assisted by Rylie Webb with a key pass from Ally Kendall. Salem tied the game once again, at 2-2, on a penalty shot with a little over 8 minutes remaining in the game, which is how regulation time ended. Salem scored with 3 minutes left in the first overtime period for their only lead of the game, and hung on for the 3-2 victory. The Lady Aces took 20 shots in the game, with 12 on frame, and created 11 additional scoring chances, and had 6 interceptions. Allison Thread had 8 saves in goal. Salem took 8 shots in the game, 4 on frame.
The girls played hard & moved the ball well, creating a lot of good scoring opportunities. They won the possession battle by a wide margin, and also had a significant lead both in shots & quality scoring chances. Our back line defenders were also pretty aggressive in trying to intercept incoming passes to the Salem attackers and they were able to start off a lot of attacks from the back. So overall it was a good performance by the whole team. We certainly played well enough to win, but just made a few mistakes here & there that ended up hurting us. That's kind of been the story of the season in almost all of our games, and I'm really proud of the girls for the way they've handled so many close losses. There were only 2 games where we really had no chance of getting the win. All of the rest were close matches, that could've gone either way if not for just a handful of plays. For that to happen all season as it did could have really had a negative impact on their attitudes & effort but for the most part they kept their positive attitudes and played through it all. As a result, they showed a lot of improvement from last year to this season. Moving forward, we'll miss the graduating seniors, but if the returning players stick with it & keep working at their games, we expect to see continued improvement.