Old habits die hard.
Buena’s girls soccer team wasn’t ready to give up its dominating string of 16-straight Channel League titles on Tuesday, topping Santa Barbara 2-1 at Girsh Park to clinch its 17th straight league championship.
The Dons entered the contest needing a win or a tie to claim the league title for themselves, but instead will enter the postseason as the No. 2 team from the Channel League. Dos Pueblos is No. 3.
Santa Barbara's Briana Lopez leaps in front of Buena's Taylor Wright to get a touch on the ball.
“The good thing about this is it doesn’t end here, you get to go back out and do it again,” said Dons head coach Brian Lloyd, whose team dropped their first league game of the season in a match with playoff-like intensity. “If I was sitting and not emotionally part of it, I would have loved that game. It was a fun game to watch.”
Santa Barbara wraps up league with a 5-1-2 record and 17 points to Buena’s 6-1-1 record and 19 points. Both teams await playoff pairings announced on Sunday.
While each team coveted the title, it was the Bulldogs who came out the stronger side in the first half and put the Dons against the ropes with two first-half goals.
“It wasn’t that the girls didn’t want it, they were just nervous,” Lloyd said. “We were just tight. It’s a big game.”
Riley Ridgik gave the Bulldogs a 1-0 advantage less than 10 minutes from the opening whistle, finishing off a corner kick from Megan Erskine.
“All (Santa Barbara) needed to do was tie the game and we knew that going in,” said Buena head coach Trish Butterbaugh, who has been at the helm for the last 14 league titles. “So our goal first half was to score as many goals as we could and get up.”
Erskine gave the Bulldogs a 2-0 cushion on a free kick in the latter half of the first frame. The senior defender was set up near mid-field but had no problem putting the ball on target from 45-yards out. The ball glanced off the bottom of the crossbar and into the goal, just out of the reach of Santa Barbara’s keeper.
The extra goal proved critical, as the Dons rallied in the second half.
“Taylor, the other back, told me to hit it. So, I was like, alright,” Erskine said of her goal. “It made us all feel good because we had confidence going into the second half and obviously we won with it.”
Katie Joseff got a goal back for the Dons in the 50th minute, banging home a rebound from a shot by Briana Lopez.
“I told my team that the second half wouldn’t be like the first half and (Santa Barbara) brought it,” Butterbaugh said. “Obviously when they scored it got hairy for awhile.”
The Dons pressured for much of the second half, sending the ball into Buena’s penalty area time and time again. The Bulldogs were able to counter-attack from time to time, but Santa Barbara produced the better chances down to the final whistle, which came on the heels of three consecutive corner kicks for the Dons.
“That was kind of the point where, it was like, ‘you know what, we need to score,'” Lopez said. “We just couldn’t finish and we had so many chances.”
Lopez, Santa Barbara’s leading goal scorer this season, said after the game that she had received a scholarship offer from South Carolina State that she expected to accept by the end of the week.
“This year I’m happy to play with the team I’m with right now,” said Lopez, who is feeling confident heading into the postseason.
“If we win in playoffs first round, we could take it all the way if we wanted to and I think we’re a team that can definitely do that,” she said.
