By Tristen Critchfield / for the Journal
If a game comes down to penalty kicks, the Albuquerque Academy girls tend to like their chances.
That’s due in no small part to the presence of senior goalkeeper Cara Anderson, who denied St. Pius’ final two shots to propel the No. 2 Chargers (17-4-1) to a 4-3 shootout victory in a Class 4A semifinal at Academy on Thursday afternoon. Academy will advance to play No. 1 Hope Christian at the UNM Soccer Complex on Saturday at 10 a.m.
“She’s scary. I get it,” said Chargers coach Andrew Wiese. “It makes the opposition think about those penalties, and (they say), ‘I’ve got to be perfect with it’ because she’s able to get to so much.”
The two semifinalists could not have been more evenly matched. They battled for 80 scoreless minutes on Wednesday before darkness suspended play, and the stalemate continued over the course of two overtime periods when the match resumed. Then, both teams were successful on their first three penalty kick attempts before Anderson extinguished the Sartans’ hopes.
“I like to be confident in myself,” she said. “If I miss one, just think, ‘Well, I’m gonna get the next one.’
“I got a little down on myself after missing the first couple,” she added. “I just tried to get my confidence back and think, ‘This next one’s mine.’ That’s kind of what changed in my mind.”
Anderson, like everyone else on the field, had to be mentally and physically ready to pick up where they left off following the suspension of play. That was a challenge by itself.
“It was definitely hard,” Anderson said. “We were trying to resume the game as it was, but obviously 24 hours later that can be hard. It’s just all about getting into the mindset and finishing business.”
In the waning moments of regulation the previous day, Anderson made a couple of crucial saves during a late St. Pius (15-7) push. She came up even bigger in the game’s second act. That’s par for the course for the college-bound star.
“She is the top goalkeeper in the state. Hands down, there’s nobody that’s even close,” Wiese said. “She made two saves in this game from (Wednesday) that nobody else is getting. She pulls stuff out of the corner that nobody else can get. That’s why she’s going off to play D-I soccer at a powerhouse in Cal Poly.”
