GALT – It took No. 3 Manteca a while to get going, but Kaley Miller was in the right place at the right time to help the Buffaloes erase a one-goal halftime deficit to fourth-seeded Christian Brothers and go on to defeat the Falcons 2-1 for the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III girls soccer championship at Liberty Ranch.
Trailing Christian Brothers (13-7-5) five minutes into the second half, Manteca’s Melissa Poncini launched a long-range direct kick in the direction of Cameron Silva. In trying to defend the play, a Falcons defender bumped the ball toward Silva who got the ball near the goal line for Miller to knock in and tie the game at 1-1.
“Their girl kind of chested it to me,” Silva said. “It was just me and the keeper and I kind of lost my balance so it ended up being Kaley Miller’s goal and I am really glad she got there and tapped it in.”
Miller was not done. In the 76th minute she took a through ball from Jordyn Silva, drew the goalie out and touched it onto the opposite corner of the net for a 2-1 lead.
“I saw it was just me and the goalie 1-v-1,” Miller said. “I knew she came out far I just took it to the right and got it soft and easy to the left corner.”
Aimee Meier posted 10 saves for the Buffaloes (21-2-4).
“We have a really good defense so that makes my job a lot easier,” Meier said. “Without them I don’t know if we would have made it here.”
Not only did Manteca trail 1-0 at halftime, the Buffaloes were outshot 11-1 in the first 40 minutes.
“The first half I thought we played a little sloppy,” Manteca coach Justin Coenenberg said. “This game had the very same feeling that the El Capitan game did. We came out, we didn’t string many passes together and we didn’t create any opportunities.
“We inverted our midfield the second half and we were more disciplined and we picked up our intensity level which created more opportunities. Just the fact that we created opportunities put them back on their heels a little bit so they did not have as much of an attack as they had in the first half. By us creating opportunities they were not always on the attack and we were able to balance things. We knocked the ball around and we were able to possess a little bit.”
This is the second blue banner for a Coenenberg-led squad, the first coming in 2016. Manteca lost in the title game to Christian Brothers in 2014.
“This was a little redemption here,” Coenenberg said.