Greenbrier boys, girls clinch region
Greenbrier's two soccer wins over Lakeside on Tuesday night meant much more than just a pair of wins against a rival.
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Both boys and girls teams clinched a Region 3B-AAAA regular season championship. Though two region games remain to be played, both Greenbrier teams are too far ahead of the rest of the subregion for those games to make any significant impact.
"It is nice. We can just let them fight over two, three and four now," said Greenbrier boys soccer coach Chip Warren.
When the Region 3-AAAA Tournament begins April 12, Greenbrier's girls and boys will enter the tournament as No. 1 seeds out of the north subregion. The two teams will face the south subregion's fourth-seeded teams at Greenbrier in the region tournament's first round. Earning the top seed is also important for another reason.
"Being the No. 1 seed is huge," Greenbrier girls soccer coach Alex Heider said. "The way it works out this year, the No. 1 seed from the north will host the region finals if both No. 1 seeds make it."
The home field advantage, which belongs to both girls and boys squads at Greenbrier, is a good sign for the two teams. Neither squad has lost a game at home this season.
Their record on the road, a combined 6-3, improved on Tuesday. Greenbrier picked up two wins over Lakeside in a pair of games that were in doubt for most of the night.
"I was worried until the last second ticked off," Greenbrier boys soccer coach Chip Warren said.
Warren's crew trailed 2-1 for over 13 minutes in the second half after Lakeside's Blake Brandenburg scored on a pass from Kyle Turner to give the Panthers the lead.
"Obviously Greenbrier has a lot of talent, and a mistake some teams make is they want to just defend them," Lakeside boys soccer coach Dave Morgan said. "We wanted to attack."
Greenbrier responded with a pair of goals in the final 25 minutes of the game to escape with a 3-2 win.
A 4-1 Lady Wolfpack win in the girls game didn't fully indicate how tight the game was played.
"Lakeside came to play tonight, and in the first half they were a better team," Heider said. "It seemed all night long the ball bounced their way, but we weathered the storm."
Greenbrier's Sara Oland scored two goals in less than 20 seconds with 30 minutes left in the second half to break the game open.
Three minutes later, Greenbrier's Stormi Childs and Lakeside's Ashley Wray violently collided head-first in a scramble for the ball. Both girls were injured, and Wray suffered a concussion.
"This was a stage two concussion," Lakeside girls soccer coach Chris Newman said. "She has no recollection of the game, but she didn't pass out."
Wray suffered a more severe concussion in a powder puff football game last fall. Newman said Thursday morning that the possibility Wray will return to the field this season is still unknown.