TJ GARCIA | SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
MISSION — Kicking a penalty in soccer is one of the loneliest things to do in team sports.
No one there to assist or coach. It’s kicker vs. goalkeeper one-on-one. Everybody’s watching. And in Sharyland forward Vanessa Guevara’s case, she was the last of 10 players to take a penalty kick in Saturday’s game against Sharyland Pioneer. The match was still tied, and everything was on the line.
Guevara calmly made the 50-yard walk from midfield to the penalty box, set the ball down and then looped her boot to the left and into the net as the goalie went right. The goal handed Sharyland a hard-earned 2-1 (3-2 penalty kicks) District 31-5A victory Saturday at home and kept the Lady Rattlers undefeated in league play (4-0).
“All the emotions, everything was just crazy and the fans were just like, ‘You got this,’” said Guevara, a junior who also notched Sharyland’s only regulation goal. “I was just thinking positive. I said, ‘I know I can do this,’ and it went it.”
Guevara added that she wasn’t even sure what exactly she was going to do until she began her motion to kick. The forward’s penalty attempt was only her second on the year.
“She is the Pioneer killer,” Sharyland High coach Aaron Clemons said. “On both our games last year, she came through, and she was our scorer, which she was again today. She’s a gamer. She was up for this game.”
While Guevara provided the last-second heroics, the Lady Rattlers played from behind most of the game. In the first half, they started as the aggressor, but quickly fell back to Pioneer’s pressure.
Pioneer sophomore forward Andrea Reyes proved tough to handle, and she repeatedly got behind Sharyland’s defense for shots on goal. She may have helped soften the defense for Shelby Fernald, who took a long pass into right corner of the penalty box and sailed an improbably angled right-footed shot past the goalie’s outstretched arms and into the left side of the net.
But that was all the scoring the Lady Diamondbacks could muster, even though they had several more chances right before half. After regulation, they only got two penalty kicks past Sharyland goalkeeper Kimberlee Cano.
“I thought our effort was good. We need to turn that good into great and we’ll be fine,” Pioneer coach J.J. Lopez said. “We knew we were going up against a good team, and it showed.”
Half way into the second half, with Kaitie Watson applying pressure with her dribbling and shots on goal, Guevara was able to score her first goal on a ricochet that Pioneer goalkeeper Stephanie Barrientos couldn’t corral. The score was Barrientos’ only miscue in an otherwise excellent game and knotted the score at 1-1 with 19:10 left.
Sharyland had a couple of decent chances after that, plus another try that bounced off the crossbar earlier in the half, but the game stayed tied until the final whistle.
In penalty kicks, Pioneer went first and scored. Sharyland followed with score, but the next four attempts were snuffed out by the goalies. So on the fourth round of tries, Pioneer found the back of the net. Next, Sharyland also scored on its fourth try to even it at 2-2. That left the game down to the fifth and final round of PKs.
Pioneer whiffed and shot wide left. Guevara then stepped up and hit the game winner.