Cheyenne Mountain moves on after shootout scare

No. 3 seed Cheyenne Mountain survived a bigtime scare from No. 14 Pueblo South, winning 1-0 after taking the shootout 3-2 on Friday.

The 4A girls soccer playoff second-round game at Cheyenne Mountain went 110 minutes without a goal before the tiebreaker.

"When it went to the shootout I felt a knot in my stomach," Indians coach Nikki Athey said. "Anything can happen at that point and to lose in a shootout is very tough."

The defending champion Indians (15-2) only needed four shootout tries after goalkeeper Caitlin Turner stopped three Colt shots.

"I wasn't too nervous as we went into the shootout," Turner said. "We practice those situations in practice everyday and I knew we could pull the win out."

Taylor Seitz, Lauren Patterson, and Darcy Jerman scored for Cheyenne Mountain.

"I went up there with confidence and I knew where I was going to shoot it," Patterson said. "All I had to do was place it in the right spot and I did."

While the Indians celebrated their close escape, the Colts (12-3-1) knew they let an upset slip away.

"We knew they were this good of a team because they beat us 2-1 last year in the quarterfinals," Colts coach Franco Miceli said. "We put our five best players out there and gave the girls the choice of where to shoot the ball."

Cheyenne Mountain had many more scoring chances than the Colts and outshot them 20-4, but all of the shots went wide of the net or were stopped by Pueblo West keeper Rhyan Passanante.

"Their keeper played a great game and made some amazing saves to keep them in it," Athey said. "We kept pushing because we thought something had to give, but we just couldn't score."

Cheyenne Mountain hosts No. 11 Niwot (11-2-4) in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.