After covering 580 miles in a school bus last week, the Torrey Pines girls’ soccer team secured a Division II CIF SoCal Regional championship with a 1-0 win over Orange Lutheran on Saturday night at Montell Field in Orange.
As the eighth and bottom seed in the tournament, the Falcons played three road games in five days and had to pull off upsets over the one [Troy], four [Granada Hills Charter] and two [Orange Lutheran] seeds, respectively — no easy feat for a team that calls its home field “the fortress.”
“They were getting home at 10:30 p.m.,” Torrey Pines head coach Martyn Hansford said. “They still have their homework. Because of the tempo and philosophy of the game we also had to lean on a fairly small group of players. They were all fatigued; they all have knocks and injuries. Our legs were going to be gone at some point – it was really their desire.”
Torrey Pines allowed one goal in three regional playoff games.
“All of our defenders were absolutely fantastic,” Hansford said. “They all had to roll their sleeves up and give everything. It was willpower and togetherness. If one of them switched off for one-minute, we were done.”
Falcons senior defender Edra Bello, a USC commit and Coastal League Player of the Year nominee, set the defensive tempo for Torrey Pines, who switched from a back-3 to back-4 alignment in the second half of the season.
“Because of her confidence on the ball, she will dribble out of pressure with the highest jeopardy which allows us to disrupt shape and then hope to dominate the ball and create more opportunities,” Hansford said.
Orange Lutheran’s high-powered offensive attack netted the Lancers six goals in the regional playoffs.
“We knew they would be very athletic and direct,” Hansford said. “I knew it would be 80 minutes where we had to be almost perfect defensively because they get the ball and it put it in the final third [of the field] as quickly and directly as they can. Our tactic was to try and minimize that by cutting it off at the source. You can’t really stop it you just have to be aware of it and believe in your own game plan.”
Torrey Pines’ lone goal came in the 19th minute, scored by junior wingback Ashley O’Regan, on a cross from fellow wingback Jaslyn Cumberland.
The goal was the first allowed by Orange Lutheran since January.
“We take a goal any way it comes in a final,” Hansford said. “We knew they would be very hard to score on. [Orange Lutheran’s] back-4 is phenomenal – very hard to break down. They are narrow in the wide areas outside of their fullbacks. We wanted to make the field as wide as we could and get our wingbacks on the ball. It was a nice combination play.”
O’Regan, in her first year on varsity, overcame confidence issues at the beginning of the season.
“She’s a fantastic kid who had been desperate to play,” Hansford said. “I told her last year ‘Look I know you want to play varsity this year but another year of JV will be really good for your development. She works her socks off but she’d make a mistake and get really down on herself.”
The play of sophomore goalkeeper Lolo Johnson sealed the win for Torrey Pines. In the 73rd minute, Johnson had two saves off back-to-back corner kicks, walling off a volley attempt.
“Absolutely exceptional,” Hansford said. “She’s really good with her feet. Lolo had an outstanding game. A couple of her saves I was just like ‘wow’.”
In the closing minutes of the match, Orange Lutheran briefly looked to have tied the game with a header, but an offside penalty nullified the score.
“As soon as it went in, I thought, ‘That’s off,’” Hansford said. “It was a fantastic header to be honest. But she was two-yards offsides, but that’s a credit to our line. It was a two or three second agonizing wait [on the call].”
Winners of their last eight road games, Hansford called assistant coach Pamela Kalinoski invaluable for her work with the team doing what he termed “mindset sessions.”
“She is very skilled in developing mental toughness,” he said. “We want to be courageous with the ball in tight areas. That can go wrong. If they are apprehensive or too nervous about making mistakes, we can’t play our brand of football.”
A year removed from winning the 2024 San Diego Section Open Division championship, the Falcons close this season 17-5, with a MaxPreps Division II state ranking of 14.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy that’s for sure,” Hansford said. “We have a really good group and the motivation was high.”
