YARMOUTH — Cape Elizabeth High overcame a red card and more than 60 minutes of playing short-handed Wednesday to beat Greely 2-1 on penalty kicks in a Western Class B girls’ soccer final.
After holding off a late second-overtime flurry by Greely (13-3-1), Cape made three of its first four penalty kicks and Greely missed two, one saved by Capers goalie Tessa Goldstein.
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That meant Cape’s fifth shooter, Mariah Deschino, stepped up knowing she could send the third-seeded Capers (12-4-1) back to defend their state championship.
“At first I thought about it and then I tried to get that out of my head so I could finish the goal, so I just breezed through it,” Deschino said.
Cape will meet Waterville (17-0) at Deering High at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in a rematch of the 2013 final won by the Capers on penalty kicks.
Cape, which lost to Greely twice in the regular season, took a 1-0 lead with 8:33 left in the half when Kathryn Clark got loose with a pass from Deschino and pushed a solid shot past Greely keeper Maddie Cyr (8 saves).
“I knew that they were not going to let down because Greely is such a great team,” Clark said.
Greely earned a corner kick in the 49th minute. Caroline Swaney’s high hard shot was knocked down by Goldstein but not controlled.
In the scramble, Courtney Sullivan had a shot on goal. The official ruled that Morgan Wright of Cape Elizabeth “obviously denied” the goal by use of her hands.
That meant Wright drew an automatic red card, putting Cape down a player for the rest of the match, and Greely received a penalty kick that Jocelyn Mitiguy converted with 31:07 left in regulation.
Despite the advantage, Greely couldn’t penetrate the Capers’ backline that often was six players wide, and generated only four more shots on Goldstein (14 saves) until the second overtime.
“They’ve got a lot of heart and they always have,” Cape Coach Craig Fannan said. “We’ve said all season that we’d keep fighting, and we haven’t had the easiest of seasons.”
Greely Coach Josh Muscadin bemoned his team’s early inability to finish opportunities.
“You look to that. We had four,” Muscadin said. “When you’re going one-on-one with the keeper, you have to put it away.”
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