Soldotna found itself in a familiar position Friday in the semifinal round of the ASAA state soccer tournament at Dimond High School.
Down 1-0 at halftime, just like Thursday’s match against Grace — a game they won 2-1 – Soldotna attempted to rally back and earn its way into Saturday’s state championship bout.
This time would be different, however, as the Stars were never able to find the right opportunity and ended up losing to West Valley 2-0.

One week removed from their third straight Northern Lights Conference title, the Soldotna girls are preparing to make their fourth trip to the state tournament out of the last five years, and they will be joined by conference rival Kenai.

Both teams faced each other last Saturday at Skyview in the conference championship game. The match was played to a scoreless draw, even after two overtime periods, and was decided by penalty kicks. Soldotna won the shootout 3-2.

The Soldotna and Kenai girls played a full 80 minutes with no score. Then they played 20 more minutes with no score, and so it came down to sudden death.

After 100 minutes of soccer resulting in a 0-0 score, the Stars outscored the Kards 3-2 on penalty kicks to win the Northern Lights Conference championship match on Saturday at Skyview.

It was the third straight NLC title for Soldotna, and fourth in five years. Kenai has won the NLC twice, the last time in 2009.

The Homer boys earned a hard-fought 1-0 overtime win over Grace Christian to advance to the final match in the Northern Lights Conference championship.

The Mariners had multiple opportunities to score during the entire match, including two goals that were negated due to the referee calling it offside, but were finally able to make it count in the 17th minute of overtime.

Lennart Von Schlichting managed to slip the ball past Grace goalkeeper Bryce Rodgers with a smooth cross assist from Konstantin Reutov.