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Cleveland wins its first girls soccer state championship
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The team to beat was a team that couldn’t be beat.
Wouldn’t be beat.
A year after a crushing loss on its home field in the state final, the Cleveland Storm regrouped, refocused and put a bright blue bow on its 2023 girls soccer season. Rylie Pengelly’s 27th-minute goal was the difference for the top-seeded Storm in a 1-0 victory over No. 2 La Cueva on Saturday afternoon at the University of New Mexico complex.
It is the first state championship for Cleveland girls soccer. Two years ago, Cleveland didn’t even qualify for the postseason.
“Everybody kept saying we were the team to beat,” said Pengelly, a senior defender, and one of six seniors that formed the nucleus of this group. “And for nobody to beat us just proves how good we are this year.”
Cleveland won 18 in a row to close the season, and won its last six by shutout.
“With the way we played,” Pengelly said, “it was pretty simple for us. We’ve been playing like this all season.”
On the goal, Taylor Williamson’s corner found Pengelly’s head as she jumped. She also made contact with a La Cueva player, who fell, and Pengelly feared there would be a foul. There wasn’t, and her shot went into the low left corner.
“It was just the best, most amazing feeling ever,” she said.
The victory came at the end of an immensely satisfying tournament for Cleveland (22-1), whose only loss came at the hands of Class 4A state champion Hope Christian, in pool play at the metro tournament early in the season.
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It was 12 months ago that Eldorado beat the Storm in penalty kicks and won the state championship in Cleveland’s back yard. But the Storm knocked out the Eagles in this year’s semifinals earlier in the week.
“This year, they were determined to win it all,” Storm coach Greg Rusk said. “They tasted the bitterness of that loss, and they attacked pretty much every physical session we had, every tactical session we had, with everything they had.”
Rusk won his fifth state championship as a coach, although it was a 29-year gap between this one and the last one with La Cueva, where he won four titles between 1990 and 1994.
Pengelly said last year’s setback to Eldorado triggered this entire effort to get over the top this time, even as Cleveland had to scrub that memory and find a way toward a clean slate.
“It was a new year, a new us, it’s a new team,” Pengelly said. “We said, forget about that, we’ll come out and play our game this year.”
Junior forward Arissa C’de Baca, Cleveland’s leading scorer this season, describes the entire process as something of a revenge tour.
“We wanted to get this back,” she said.
And now it is La Cueva that will face the pain and sting. Amber Ashcraft, the coach of the Bears (19-3-1), played for Rusk at La Cueva, and she won the most recent state final between the two, in 2017.
But the Bears’ offensive chances were few and far between Saturday. There was a late cross that nearly found the foot of a sliding Makayla Chavez that might have been a great chance but the ball traveled too quickly through the box to be touched. And Cleveland sophomore goalkeeper Maddie Johnson made a critical save with about a minute to go, tipping a shot away.
“In the first half, we had our opportunities to take shots and we just didn’t,” Ashcraft said. “We kept wanting to make that extra pass.”
But with a largely young group, Ashcraft, who was seeking a state record eighth championship as La Cueva’s coach, was filling the glass halfway.
“The future looks bright for us,” she said. “But it’s always hard to lose this game.”
CLEVELAND 1, LA CUEVA 0
La Cueva 0 0 – 0
Cleveland 1 0 – 1
Scoring: C, 27th, Rylie Pengelly. Shots on goal: LC 3; C 4. Saves: LC, Mary Valdez 3; C, Maddie Johnson 3. Corners: LC 3; C 5. Records: C 22-1; LC 19-3-1.
