For T-Wolves, another valiant postseason run comes up just short
Author’s note: Over the past couple of weeks, I picked back up the same prep soccer beat I assigned myself from 2004 to 2018 … and continued to dabble in through the rest of my full-time days at The Norman Transcript. Though sports editor, columnist and Sooner women’s basketball beat writer, too, I never tired of the craziness that remains the last two weekends of the high school sports calendar, when it’s all happening and, typically, two or three, and sometimes four Norman teams threatened to win a state title. So there I was at Taft Stadium Saturday evening, charting the Norman North girls aim to win another state title.
I took the high schools as seriously as OU and the Thunder when I ran the Transcript’s sports section knowing, though our prep audience may not be as broad as that for the higher levels, the readers of it were almost certainly more emotionally involved in it, and that mattered huge. For instance, were I still in charge and had two writers to deploy, as well as myself, I would have sent one to the state track meet, one to the state title soccer game, myself to soccer for a column, and nobody to the Big 12 softball tournament, nor OU baseball’s home series with Baylor. There are, probably, three more weeks of softball and possibly more for baseball, so they afford to have their stories rewritten from boxscores inning recounts rather than attended, no matter how high they’re ranked. The second weekend in May should always be a high school sports operation.
Anyway, below is not my best work.
I picked up the beat in the state quarterfinal round having not covered the program at all since the 2022 playoffs and a game or two from that regular season. I did not know the characters as well as I would have liked.
Still, I wrote the best story I could, also trying to thread the needle between game story and column, offering a narrative on the season, the program and the game itself. There’s one harsh transition I couldn’t fix and that will be the spot below in which I advertise for additional subscriptions.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this stream of consciousness introduction as well as the story below.
OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s mostly its own reward, because winning is so much more fun than losing and playing for championships tends to be remembered forever and still, the rotten thing about being a great team?
Sometimes, you’re not the only one.
It’s a lesson coach Trevor Laffoon’s Norman North girls have now endured a third straight season.
Saturday night, at historic and venerable Taft Stadium, the Timberwolves came up on the short end of a classic, falling 2-1 to Edmond North in the Class 6A state championship soccer game.
The contest marked North’s fifth straight trip to the title game, the first in 2019 before the COVID pandemic wiped out the 2020 season.
The T-Wolves claimed state titles in 2019 and 2021, the latter over the same Edmond North program it couldn’t get past Saturday.
On this day, not only did the Huskies own a 15 to 7 shot advantage, but the better chances, too.
“We didn’t play enough of our game in our attacking half,” Laffoon said, a fact Edmond North had much to do with.
Laffoon saluted the Huskies’ defensive strategy, one that frequently placed two midfielders close to and in front of North forwards Presley Boyd and Narissa Fults, and a line of four defenders behind them.
That strategy made it very difficult for North’s midfield to get the ball to the feet of its forwards and, on the occasions it did, the forwards were immediately under pressure from two sides.
The two times — the only two times North had opportunities from close range — the T-Wolves made Edmond North keeper Leslie Miller make first-half saves, the space in which Fults controlled the ball near the Husky goal was so heavily trafficked, her only option was to shoot through Miller, who stood her ground each time.
That dynamic finally changed with 13:18 remaining when, during one of the rare moments to that point, the T-Wolves managed sustained pressure inside the Huskies’ penalty box, long enough for midfielder Makenna Adam to put her head in the path of a Fults cross and send the ball past Miller.
“I got where I needed to be and got to it,” Adam said.
It was her second header to find the net in the space of two games, having handed North its final goal in Tuesday’s semifinal victory over Yukon the same way.
From that point forward, the pitch tilted toward Edmond North’s goal.
That was good.
That only 13:18 remained was not.
“The last 20 minutes,” Laffoon said, “it was a lot better.”
With 8:20 remaining, North took the last of its seven corner kicks — the first three having come in the first 4 minutes — though no chance was created.
With 5:45 remaining, for perhaps the only time the entire game, the ball squirted out of the Huskies’ penalty box to a North forward, Boyd, with room to shoot and no time for a defender to close the space. The play might have materialized too quickly for Boyd, who didn’t get her best swing on the ball from 22 yards, allowing Miller a none-too-hard save.
Time ran out.
Edmond North claimed its first goal with 7 seconds remaining in the first half, when Julia McBride found room to shoot from about 15 yards to North keeper Callie Sullivan’s left.
Trying to make a play on the ball before it reached Sullivan, North defender Reese Keiffer deflected the ball into the net.
The Huskies’ second goal came in the second half’s 11th minute, when the ball found McBride again in a similar position, this time to Sullivan’s right and this time reaching the net undeflected.
It was an interesting scene as the horn sounded, the Huskies coming together and celebrating in a circle slightly to their bench’s side of midfield, while many T-Wolves went to the ground, their emotions hitting them just as it ended.
Halley Jewell, Izzy Fletcher, Parker McGraw, Boyd and Adam were among those taking it the hardest.
The funny thing about that group? Jewell’s a sophomore, Fletcher, McGraw, Boyd and Adam are all juniors.
Oh, to have so many players for whom it means so much and who are returning, and they’re not the only ones.
It may be very hard keeping North from the season’s final day a sixth straight time next year.
Would be nice for the name recognition of Jayden White defending Narissa in the photo.