Malibu AYSO U-16 girls win area championship for second year in a row
The Malibu U-16 girls team won the AYSO Area Championship on Oct. 27, defeating the No. 1 seed and previously unbeaten Newberry Park team. The victory, the Malibu girl’s second consecutive area championship, captured the AYSO Area title in a tournament that began with 18 teams from Area E including teams from Agoura/Westlake, Moorpark, Newberry Park, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks.
The winning game was a tension filled drama. The teams fought to a 0-0 draw in the first half as the teams tested each other’s defenses. With 15 minutes left in the second half, Malibu’s Becky Pieper gave her team the lead with a powerful shot to the upper right corner of the Newberry goal from 25 yards out. The Malibu girls looked like they would win the game in regulation as they fought off the Newberry team time after time during the waning minutes of the second half. But, two minutes into “stoppage time,” extra time allowed to make up for time taken during injuries, the Newberry Park girls scored a dramatic tying goal on a corner kick. Regulation play ended one minute later in a 1-1 tie.
The Malibu team fought through the two, seven- and a-half minute overtime periods with neither team scoring, thanks in large measure to a spectacular save by the Malibu goalie Brianna Cowart, late in the second overtime. That sent the game into a shootout, called “kicks from the mark” in AYSO, to decide the championship. Under AYSO rules, five players from each team alternate shots from a mark 12 yards from the goal defended only by the other team’s goalie.
The Malibu girls won the shootout 4-3, with goals by Brianna Cowart, Lindsay Pieper, Danielle Horn and Eva Post.