PETALUMA >> The Middletown Mustangs won”t be making a third straight trip to the North Coast Section Division III girls” soccer championship game and they have those other Mustangs, the ones from St. Vincent High School, to blame.
In a contest that wasn”t decided until St. Vincent scored in the final two minutes, Middletown fell 3-1 in semifinal-round action on Wednesday afternoon in Petaluma. A victory would have propelled Lake County”s Mustangs (15-3-3) into the Division III finals for a third straight year and with a third different head coach. Instead, it will be an all-North Central League II final on Saturday as NCL II winner Sonoma Academy (23-0-1), the No. 1 seed and defending section champion, plays NCL II runner-up and No. 2 seed St. Vincent (17-2-2) for the title at Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park.
Sonoma Academy beat Roseland Prep 3-0 in the other semifinal game on Wednesday.
The championship game could go either way if the two league meetings between the teams are any indication. Sonoma Academy and St. Vincent tied 2-2 in the first meeting while Sonoma Academy won the second 4-3.
Middletown, the seven-time defending NCL I champion, scored its lone goal in the first half on a Caitlin Lemoine shot with a crossing-pass assist from Kaleigh Alves to pull into a 1-1 tie. St. Vincent pulled ahead 2-1 late in the half and that”s where the score remained until a goal with 2:25 left made it 3-1.
It was only the third time the Mustangs had tasted defeat all season under first-year coach Amy Emerson — a non-league loss to Ukiah way back on Sept. 9 and a league setback to Clear Lake on Oct. 28 accounted for the other losses. Middletown later avenged the defeat to Clear Lake with a 2-0 victory in a quarterfinal-round playoff game last Saturday.
“We call ourselves the ”unlikely team”,” Emerson said. “The team has a new coach, half of our players are freshmen and no one expected us to go as far as we did.”
In fact, Emerson said even she is surprised how much success the Mustangs had in 2014.
“I really thought it was going to be a rebuilding year,” Emerson said. “But these girls exceeded my expectations ? they went far beyond my expectations.”
While Emerson has a daughter on the team, junior Rosie Emerson, Middletown”s coach said she has no plans to leave when Rosie graduates. “My vision is to stay on as coach for more than a few years. I do have a daughter who is 11 who will be here soon. I”m here for the long haul.”
While the Mustangs weren”t favored to beat St. Vincent, a higher seed, that doesn”t mean the team was simply happy to reach the semifinals this year, not after back-to-back trips to the championship game in 2012-13. A number of players on this year”s roster played in both of those finals — Alves and Rosie Emerson included — and they were expecting no less this season, according to their coach.
“There were a lot of tears after the game. It means they have heart. Their tears were full of heart,” Emerson said.
The good news is Middletown loses only one player to graduation, which means the Mustangs should be as good or better in 2015.
“I am looking forward to next season, but it may take me a while before I let go of this one,” Emerson said of the loss to St. Vincent, a game that was more physical than she expected. “There are a lot of things I”m wondering if we could have done different.”
That”s a trait of a veteran coach, something Emerson now is.
