'Overcoming obstacles': Pace girls soccer advances to District 1-6A title game after PKs

The Pace girls soccer team has battled some adversity this year.

Head coach Nick Williamson and senior Lexi Basel both called it “road bumps” along the way. The Patriots went through an unexpected coaching change in the middle of the regular season. And heading into the District 1-6A semifinal matchup on Friday at Ashton Brosnaham Athletic Park against Gulf Breeze – the defending Class 6A state champions, and third seed in the district tournament – Williamson said the team had a “long talk” at school about “overcoming obstacles” and “concentrating on the next play.”

Not only did that correlate to their entire season, but the game was a strong representation for the short-term of “getting past road blocks,” Williamson and Basel mentioned.

Pace closed out its regular season on a three-game win streak, and the players thought they had the top seed in the district locked, especially after beating Navarre earlier in January. But Navarre snuck past the Patriots to claim the No. 1 spot – consider that the first “road bump” heading into Friday.

The second? Pace found itself down 1-0 after Gulf Breeze’s Amelia Jacobs hit the back of the net on a penalty kick after she was fouled in the penalty area with 11 minutes left in the first half.

“If something happens that’s bad, the most important play is the next one. You’ve got to have a short memory,” Williamson said. “We’ve tried to play the whole year like that.”

Minutes later, Berkleigh Jernigan tied the game after she turned on the jets and took a shot from an angle. The ball bounced off the hands of Dolphins goalie Madi Sloman and into the net.

Play went back and forth, but no one scored. Not during the 40-minute second half, nor during the two 10-minute overtime frames. It was going to come down to penalty kicks. Gulf Breeze had the first chance to score, and Jacobs found twine for Gulf Breeze.

Basel went up first – a “responsibility she wanted” as a “leader” of the Patriots, Williamson noted – but her shot was blocked by Sloman. Road bump No. 3.

And so began a 12-round penalty kick shootout to determine who would go to the championship game. The penalty kicks went so long that teams started to repeat players to try to end the contest.

In the final round of penalty kicks, with both teams having scored 10 goals apiece, Gulf Breeze’s Skylar Hendricks fired a shot that bounced off the goalpost. Pace had the chance to win it, and it came down to Basel.

“Well, after I missed the first one, I was stressed. … My teammates were telling me to throw that first PK out the back and focus on the second one,” Basel said. “I was thinking power and placement – and then placement over power.”

“The things we can’t control, we have to let them go,” Williamson said. “It’s what happened tonight with the PKs. We go out, miss the first PK and we fight back.”

Basel’s shot went to the right and hit the back of the net. Obstacle overcome. Pace had defeated Gulf Breeze in penalty kicks after a 1-1 tied game to advance to the District 1-6A championship game on Tuesday.

“Oh my god, my heart dropped when I saw the ball go in,” said Pace goalkeeper Zoey Mattes, who was standing off to the side when Basel took her second penalty kick. “I was so excited.”

And then pandemonium ensued.

“My first thought was, ‘Go and celebrate with my team.’ I almost broke down right there. It was a team win, though,” Basel said. “It was the happiest moment of my life, up until this point. … I was stoked. The way they were running at me, I just felt their joy.”

“I told them, ‘We’re going to win this game,’” said Williamson, who went out to his team before the 11th round of penalty kicks. “We start out the gate with an obstacle and we had to overcome it – and we did.”

Here are three takeaways from the game.

Defense, defense and more defense

Gulf Breeze had control of the offensive portion of the game for what seemed like a majority of it. While the Dolphins were averaging just 1.9 goals per game coming into Friday’s contest (28 total on the season), plus 5.4 shots on goal per match (81 total), they have a handful of forwards that can truly make a difference.

That’s where the Patriots’ defense came into play, withstanding just about everything Gulf Breeze could throw at them. Mattes only let in the penalty kick from Jacobs in the first half. Everything else was blocked and shoved aside, including some leaping saves on shots from 20 or 30 yards out.

Basel called the defensive battle “tiring,” but she thought the back defensive line “played pretty solid.” Basel was stationed around midfield for Friday’s game, and knew if she got beat by Gulf Breeze’s talented forwards, the Pace defense could pick things up.

“Gulf Breeze has some good forwards, it was a tough challenge,” Basel said.

There were a few instances of through-ball passes to Jacobs that the Patriots’ defense hadn’t seen much of this season, Mattes said. And with Jacobs’ speed, Mattes gave the South Alabama commit “a lot of credit” for the chances she produced. But now that Pace has seen that type of offense, the defense knows what to expect moving forward.

And that includes Mattes.

“I said it the first time we played Gulf Breeze: Zoey is an animal. I looked at her before she went out there and said, ‘Be a wall.’ I had complete faith in her. I believed she could get the job done, and she did,” Williamson said. “That kid has complete confidence in herself, and she absolutely deserves that confidence.”

‘We’re absolutely relentless’

The Pace-Gulf Breeze game started at 5 p.m. and, hypothetically had the game ended in regulation, would’ve been over in about an hour-and-a-half to make way for the 7 p.m. semifinal contest between Tate and Navarre.

Instead, the battle went 100 minutes of game time, plus an approximate additional 20 minutes for penalty kicks. It was a game that just wasn’t going to end in a calm way. And it didn’t seem to matter that the game finished around 7:52 p.m. – both teams carried energy for the nearly three hours that the contest took.

And, for Pace, it goes back to its team motto.

“We made a shirt in the beginning of the year, and on the back of it, it says, ‘Relentless.’ And that’s how this team is right now,” Williamson said. “We’re absolutely relentless.”

While Friday’s game was essentially a marathon, the Patriots know the mission isn’t over. They know their opponent in Tuesday’s championship game will be Navarre. They know it won’t be an easy game. But their confidence is “really high” as they prepare over the weekend, Basel said.

“The effort, the focus is going to be on point,” she said.

Williamson and Mattes both said the Patriots are “on a mission” to accomplish their goal of a district title.

“We’re sky-high, buddy,” Williamson said of the team’s confidence level. “We’re going to win the next game. We’re going to win the next game and host regionals. That’s our mentality right now.”

“We want to win it all now. We were confident coming into this game,” Mattes said. “I think we’re going to go all the way.”

‘It hurts, for sure’

Gulf Breeze head coach Albert Gatica believed the Dolphins were the better team, between controlling possession for a majority of the game and creating more offensive opportunities – it was a thought he called “sour grapes.” But Gulf Breeze couldn’t capitalize.

That allowed Pace, a team that is “organized defensively,” to stay in the game, Gatica said. “And at that point, anything can happen.”

“It’s always frustrating. We spend a ton of time in training on finishing,” he said. “We just couldn’t get it in the goal tonight.”

With the latest FHSAA state rankings, Gulf Breeze came in seventh in Region 1 for Class 6A. So if the season had ended earlier in the week, the Dolphins would get an at-large bid into the regional tournament. It’s still possible they could, depending on how next week’s rankings line up.

It gives Gatica’s team “a sliver of hope” that the 2023-24 season will continue for Gulf Breeze.

Either way, Friday’s loss “still hurts, for sure,” Gatica added.

“The girls will remember this for – I want to say for the rest of their life – but for the near future. There’s always a lesson to be learned. We’ll be good,” Gatica said. “We’ll see what happens as far as rankings go after the district final. If we are lucky enough to advance, the girls will battle.”

Ben Grieco is a sports reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He can be reached on X (@BenGriecoSports) and via email at BGrieco@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pace girls soccer beats Gulf Breeze in District 1-6A semifinals