Manteo scores 5 goals in 2nd half to beat Wheatmore in 2A girls soccer championship game
If you must label it an upset — and you'd be well within your right to call it one — it was one that was heard from Murphy to Manteo.
Obviously it was heard in Manteo.
The Redskins are taking home the title.
The Manteo girls soccer team stunned defending champion Wheatmore, which was riding a state-record 49-game winning streak, with a 5-3 victory on Saturday in the N.C. High School Athletic Association 2A title match held at UNC-Greensboro.
Manteo (25-0-2) stopped arguably the state's most fearsome scoring attack ever — Wheatmore (24-1) entered the game with a state-record 200 goals scored, led by Ellie Garrison's state-record 94 goals — to come away with its first title in its first appearance.
Wheatmore led 1-0 at halftime as Manteo slowed down the Warriors' attack considerably.
The only first-half tally came in the 34th minute as Summer Bowman slotted in a through ball from Garrison. Manteo had come out firing on all cylinders, prompting Wheatmore to drop Bowman and Bowman to midfield and Natalie Bowman from midfield to back line to account for the Redskins' dangerous attack.
"We started the game great. We were playing the way we had instructed them to play, controlling the tempo, keeping the ball on the ground," Manteo coach Ralph Cleaver said. "We were never going to quit either way, but once that (first second-half) goal sparked us, and that belief set back in, and we doubled down on the way we play — the girls just went out and executed and found a way to get it done."
The Redskins saved all of its scoring in the second half. It was a back-and-forth second half that had both sides oscillating between delirium and panic.
Kiley Eckard evened the score for Manteo, making it 1-1 in the 42nd minute with a shot that deflected off a Wheatmore defender.
Two minutes later, in the 44th minute, Wheatmore's Natalie Bowman scored off a free kick that hit the post to make it 2-1.
A handball in the box set up Manteo to tie it again, as Flynn scored the PK in the 63rd minute. In the 66th minute, Manteo took its first lead, 3-2, as Flynn struck from just outside the box.
Flynn was named MVP of the match.
"We came in here as underdogs," Flynn said. "After we beat Clinton (in the 2A East regional final) we knew we weren't done. ... We couldn't go all the way home and not win states."
Eckard doubled the lead with her second goal of the game to make it 4-2 in the 72nd minute.
A strike from distance from Garrison, who finished her junior year with 95 goals, made it 4-3, but a foul in the box set up Manteo's Abby Calvio for a PK to round out the scoring in the 77th minute.
Before the game, each team awarded sportsmanship awards to one of their players. Manteo gave theirs to Hannah Hogan, while Wheatmore awarded theirs to Mikalah Walls.
