The Kenai Central girls soccer team is battered, bruised and on its way to state.

The Kardinals scored two goals in the first 13 minutes of the game and made them stand up in a 2-0 triumph over Grace Christian on Friday in the Northern Lights Conference tournament semifinals at Skyview.

The Kards will face Soldotna at 2 p.m. Saturday at Skyview in the championship game. Grace faces Wasilla in the third-place game at 10 a.m., with the winner going to state.

The Soldotna girls soccer team has carried the banner for the Southern Division of the Northern Lights Conference the last two years.

As the NLC tournament prepares to kick off, the rest of the Southern Division figures it’s time to give the Stars some help.

The SoHi girls, who enter the tournament at 11-0, have won three of the last four conference titles. The Stars also have won the last two conference crowns, and were the only Southern Division team to qualify for state in both of those years.

The week before the Northern Lights Conference tournament, the host Soldotna soccer teams provided Palmer with a measuring stick Friday.

The Moose measured up pretty well.

The Palmer girls lost to SoHi 2-1 as the Stars moved to 10-0 overall and the Moose dropped to 3-4-3. Despite the loss, Palmer coach Harmony Chadwick was extremely pleased with the way Palmer responded to Soldotna's physical play.

In the boys game, the Moose notched a 2-1 victory that marked the first time Palmer has beaten SoHi during Palmer coach Kevin Dearborn's six-year tenure.

It took Soldotna’s Lagi Wong six career games to get her ice cream.

Before the softball season, Wong made a bet with her cousin Lindsey Wong, an eighth-grader at Soldotna Middle School. If Lagi hit a home run this season, Lindsey had to buy Lagi ice cream. If Lagi failed to go yard, the ice cream was on Lagi.

Because Lagi, a senior who just moved back to the area from Utah, had never picked up a bat before this year, the odds were in favor of free ice cream for Lindsey.

One problem. Lagi is a natural.