After being awarded a first-round bye following a regular season where they finished with 16 wins and first place in the Southern League standings, the No.4 Denair High School girls soccer program had their sights set on a deep postseason run.
That run started with No.5 Bradshaw Christian School (Sacramento), who was coming off a dominant 9-0 shutout win against No.12 Rio Vista High School last Friday.
Tuesday’s playoff match was not only the first-ever matchup between the two programs, but also a representation of two different spectrums of success.
Denair is coming off of back-to-back seasons with at least 10 wins after which the program initially hadn’t seen a winning season in more than a decade. This is their first playoff game since the 2007-08 season where they fell to Forest Lake Christian (Auburn), 1-0.
Bradshaw Christian, meanwhile, has not had the best regular season success, but has made a postseason appearance in three of the last four seasons. They have won a postseason match in all three of their recent appearances.
Despite having home-field advantage, Denair’s historic season came to an end following a 4-0 shutout loss to Bradshaw Christian in the quarterfinals of the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division VI on Tuesday.
Bradshaw Christian head coach Giovanni Cortes said the team emphasized stopping Denair’s lead goal scorer, sophomore midfielder Jazmin Padilla, by not giving her any space to operate. That defensive gameplan worked as this was Padilla’s first goalless match this season.
Bradshaw Christian will advance to the semifinals to face No.1 Ripon Christian. Ripon Christian, the reigning Sac-Joaquin Section champions, is coming off a 6-0 shutout win against No.8 Millennium High School (Tracy).
While it was not the result that the Coyotes wanted, assistant head coach Antonio Padilla praised the players for being relentless throughout the season.
“I’m very proud of them, I’m very happy because they gave it [their] all. That was the most important part and that was the message, and that’s what we did,” Antonio Padilla said.
Bradshaw Christian’s senior midfielder Lucy Miller recorded a hat-trick while sophomore forward Emmalyn Franey scored a goal. This was the fourth time this season that Miller has recorded at least a hat-trick performance.
Miller opened the scoring for Bradshaw Christian in the 12th minute as she struck the ball on the right side of Denair’s goalpost.
Fifteen minutes later, Miller scored another goal off a free kick to give her team a 2-0 lead.
As Bradshaw Christian built on their early lead, multiple defenders kept adding pressure on Jazmin Padilla and other Denair players by stealing possessions and contesting the inbound pass.
Miller scored her final goal of the match in the final two minutes of the opening half as Bradshaw Christian took a 3-0 lead heading into intermission.
The second half continued to be much more of the same as the first as Bradshaw Christian continued to put pressure on the Coyotes.
Franey scored the final goal of the match in the 96th minute as Bradshaw Christian continues to find success in the postseason.
With seven seniors set to graduate from their 22-team roster, Denair will look to carry continuity heading into next season.
“We have to understand the situation that we are in and we don’t have to look back,” Antonio Padilla said.
