Four different Merced High girls scored goals in a third quarter that saw the Bears outscore St. Mary’s 4-0 that turned the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II championship in Merced’s favor. The top-seeded Bears erased a one-goal deficit at the half and went on to claim back-to-back section titles with a hard-fought 9-7 victory over the No. 2 Rams on Saturday afternoon at the Roseville Aquatic Complex.

 

“Two years in a row is special,” said Merced coach Kit Grattan, whose team improved to 28-2 this season. “I'm super proud of the work they put in. They started working for last year's championship the week after we lost to El Cap. They just kept on working. They have a great attitude and work hard.”

 

Merced High’s aquatic program took over the pool in Roseville on Saturday with both the boys and girls winning section championships. Both programs took a group photo together with their blue banners. “It feels amazing,” said Merced junior Olivia Westerberg. “ This feels so great.”

 

Westerberg played a key role in the Bears’ victory, scoring two goals. The left-hander isn’t asked to score often from the wing, but delivered her first goal in the second quarter to help Merced keep pace with St. Mary’s. The Rams opened up a 5-3 lead with 20 seconds left in the half. Merced came up with a huge answer as the Bears capitalized on a St. Mary’s ejection and a man-up situation. Taylor Lung quickly fired a pass to Sarah Slocum at 2-meters and Slocum deposited the ball in the net to cut the Rams’ lead to 5-4 with seven seconds left in the second quarter.

 

That last-second goal gave Merced the momentum heading into halftime. It’s just a different mentality when you’re only down one goal compared to two,” said Merced junior Dorothy Drury, who scored two goals. Grattan said the last-second goal was huge. “They were going on a little bit of a run so to get that one back, you could see the look on our faces,” Grattan said. “It went from,.’ I'm not sure. I'm a little nervous,’to ‘Oh yeah, we got this.’ So that just felt so good. We were ready to go after about two minutes of halftime. Then we came out, and then just put the foot on the pedal.”

 

The Bears started hurting the Rams in transition and Drury scored a counter-attack goal to tie the game at 5-5 with 4:36 left in the third quarter. Westerberg then fired a shot that found the back of the next from the wing to give Merced a 6-5 lead with 3:56 left in the third quarter. “We could feel that they were getting tired and we could push through,” Westerberg said. “Our third quarter was our best quarter of the game.”

 

Slocum and Zoey Hickman added third-quarter goals to push the Bears’ lead to 8-5 and the Merced defense took over the rest of the way. It wasn’t long before the whole team and coaches were plunging into the pool to celebrate their second consecutive championship. 

 

The Bears did it with contributions from everyone in the pool. Junior goalie Audrey O’Bruba played well in the cage all game, stopping 12 shots. Slocum led the offense with three goals. Taylor Lung and Elise Metcalf both had two assists.

“These girls do whatever I ask them to do,” said Grattan, whose team advances to the NorCal Regionals next week. “I make them do a lot. It’s a lot of hard work and they’re willing to do it. That’s how you become successful, with a lot of hard work.”

Shawn Jansen is the MUHSD Program Manager Digital Media. He can be reached at Sjansen@muhsd.org.