Saturday, October 22, 2016

4:30 PM

Game Recap

Juan Diego denies Logan back-to-back girls soccer titles
By Garrett Faylor sports writer

SANDY — If you’re looking for a feel-good story about how the Logan girls soccer team overcame a season of adversity, most notably losing its star player, to return to the state final and win back-to-back championships, prepare to be disappointed.

But, man. They came real close.

In a Region 11 rubber match with Juan Diego, Logan fell 3-0 Saturday afternoon at Rio Tinto Stadium.

“Maybe we could have stepped a little faster, maybe we could have tracked our marks a little bit better, but at the end of the day we lost to a good team, we lost to a state championship team,” Logan head coach Sven Rasmussen said. “There’s no dishonor. I’m super proud of our girls.”

The Soaring Eagle (14-5-1) set its tone and its pace early on, either beating Logan (14-4-1) to balls or winning balls by being much more physical.

“We made sure they were shut down, forced to play into the middle, eliminated the middle and control the game and got a good outcome out of this,” Juan Diego head coach Daniel Cavar said.

At the 10-minute mark, AnnaMaria DiGeronimo got a pass from Laveni Vaka. DiGeronimo had an open look and put the ball where Logan goalkeeper Sam Aguilar couldn’t get it and into the back of the net.

Then five minutes before halftime, Juan Diego’s Avery Fries swung a corner kick into goal, which Aguilar punched away. Aguilar’s save resulted in another corner. This time Fries found Daviana Vaka waiting in front of goal, and the Soaring Eagle went up 2-0 before the break.

“I felt like they just played faster; they’re a great side,” Logan midfielder Kennedy Michel said. “They’re an amazing team. They just came out hard and we couldn’t keep up. We tried. We all tried our hardest.”

Juan Diego kept up its quick and physical play in the second half.

With 18 minutes left in the game, Heaven Kelley took a free kick that cleared the Logan defense. Daviana Vaka alertly tracked the ball down and, with a 1-v-1 against Aguilar, put it in to put the game out of reach.

“I really like playing them,” Logan’s Zoe Clark said of Juan Diego. “They’re always a good competition, and I think that we both had a really good chance, but they came out and played harder, and they deserved it.”

The shutout was Juan Diego’s seventh, and only the second time this season a 3A team held Logan scoreless; the other was a 0-0 game with Morgan that got called five minutes into the second half because of lightning.

Logan won the first matchup with Juan Diego 1-0 and fell 2-1 in the region finale.

Utah commit Demi Lopez went down with a ruptured ACL in Logan’s second game against Sky View on Aug. 11.

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