King’s Fork High School’s girls’ soccer team lost in overtime to Courtland High School in the semifinals of the regional tournament.

King’s Fork ended the game in regulation tied 1-1 but in overtime Courtland had more penalty kicks, seven to the Lady Bulldogs’ six, giving them the victory. The Lady Bulldogs put up a tremendous effort to stay alive, but ultimately, that was not enough to prevent them from being knocked out of tournament play.

Coach Mike Marston felt like his girls had a successful season.

“Other than the disappointment of not advancing to states, we accomplished what our main goals were, which was playing better in the end, winning our conference and getting a No. 1 seed in region, and then winning the first regional game in school history,” said Marston. “Those were our main objectives.”

The game started out well for the Lady Bulldogs. Around 15 minutes into the first half, Rebecca Washburn took a free kick that hit off of the crossbar. Cydney Nichols won the ball, who in turn delivered it to Alyssa Vick for the Lady Bulldogs’ only score in regulation. That score put the Lady Bulldogs up 1-0.

Besides Courtland scoring the tying goal, Marston said that his team completely dominated the second half. Looking back at the game, he wished his team could have capitalized on missed opportunities.

“We had at least four premium goal scoring chances, we were one on one with the keeper, one time we shot it at the goalie and the other three times the ball was just shot wide,” said Marston.

After a defensive back and forth, the game ended at 1-1 leading into two five-minute overtimes. Logan Montel had an opportunity to score at the end of the second overtime, but she redirected the kick about a foot wide of the goal. Afterwards, there were two more five-minute periods of sudden-death overtime, but neither team had a real chance to score. That finally led to the penalty kicks.

“I’ve coached a lot of high level club games and typically when you create those fantastic opportunities and the finishing gods are not smiling on you, it tends to come back and bite you in the end,” Marston said. “At the end of the game, the athletic director for Courtland told us that we are the best team he had seen all year. That’s great, but we would rather have the win.”