Lady Panthers, Mustangs get ready for postseason
The Colleyville Heritage girls soccer team finished the regular season with a split of its two games last week. The Lady Panthers (10-6-5, 6-4-2 5-6A) lost to Coppell but easily handled Richland in the finale.
“We did a decent job against Richland, but I think going forward we’re going to have some pretty good confidence,” Colleyville Heritage coach Misail Tsapos said. “Our possessions have been pretty good as we’re going into the playoffs.”
The Lady Panthers open the Class 6A Region I bi-district postseason against South Grand Prairie at 6 p.m. Friday at Bedford’s Pennington Field. If the Lady Panthers advance to the area round, they would oppose the winner of Northwest Byron Nelson and likely Allen (Allen played Monday night). It could be a potential father-daughter rematch between Tsapos and his daughter Katina, who is a defender for Nelson. Nelson and Colleyville Heritage faced each other during the season.
As the playoffs begin, Tsapos said he needs strong performances from his two outside forwards, junior Shine Pickler and sophomore Allie Lumpkin, along with his midfielders Jasmine Sollars and Taylor Hansby.
“We’re comfortable with a lot of these teams and can play them straight up,” Tsapos said. “This game is about turnovers. We have to create some and then make sure we recover if we make a mistake.
“When we’re at critical moments of the game, the mentality of the team has to be good and then just find way to put a ball in the back of the net. We’re naive enough not to understand the magnitude of the playoffs. So we’re just going to go out and do everything and make sure we get a good pace.”
Grapevine update
Grapevine girls athletes apparently will settle for nothing but perfection. Like volleyball and basketball, the girls soccer team finished their district season undefeated.
Following an 8-0 rout of Fort Worth Eastern Hills on March 17, the Lady Mustangs (18-2-1, 12-0 in District 6-5A) move in to the Class 5A state playoffs as one of heavy favorites to win a state championship. In fact, they may actually be the only heavy favorite.
The Lady Mustangs face Azle in the Region I bi-district round at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Saginaw High School’s Rough Rider Stadium.
“For me the biggest thing is that with all of the variables we’ve had to deal with this year, the girls have really done a good job maintaining their focus,” head coach Steve McBride said. “There are ways to stay sharp and continue to play better than they have.”
In the win over the Lady Highlanders, eight different players scored, including Hayley Bargery and Sydney and Sophia Smith. That’s going to continue to be the formula throughout the postseason.
In most online or print rankings, Grapevine is either the No. 1 or No. 2 ranked Class 5A team in Texas. The heavy number of returning players allowed this group to understand the expectations.
“I like where we’re at,” McBride said. “We have a lot of experience. The key for us is just making sure that we’re managing our emotions and going over the things that made us successful. Those are the big parts of what we do.”
Because of how deep this team is McBride said he believes most opponents will play deep on their end of their field to clog up space and limit scoring chances. However, McBride said his team is used to that approach because it saw that all season.
This story was originally published March 23, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Lady Panthers, Mustangs get ready for postseason."