Falcons win fourth straight title

PHOTOGRAPHER: Bill Palmer

Though they had been on this stage before, the Northville girls’ soccer team didn’t feel entirely comfortable until the closing minutes of Tuesday’s Class D championship game against Sharon Springs.

Two goals in the final six minutes eventually locked up a 3-0 win and the Falcons’ fourth consecutive sectional title.

“You want to get that insurance goal, but it wasn’t coming,” said first-year Northville head coach Christopher Edwards. “When we got that second goal, it was all downhill from there.”

“This is my third, and it’s amazing,” said senior goalkeeper Kristi Bills. “It’s been a great senior season.”

Ashley Ferguson scored midway through the first half, but the sixth-seeded Spartans held tough until Madalyn Ryan and Georgiana Maye broke through in the final minutes of the second half.

“We tied Northville history with four titles in a row,” Edwards said. “It’s a great accomplishment.”

Edwards was a little wary of the Spartans, who had taken out the second and third seeds to get to the final.

“We knew they were going to come out strong,” he said. “They’ve improved every game that they’ve played. They beat the two seed and they beat the three seed, so we knew it was going to be a tough game”

“We knew we did not bring it 100 percent when we played them during the season,” said Bills, who made a diving save with 8:02 left to keep her team up a goal. “This time, we did. We have a lot of players who have been in this game before, so we knew what we had to do.”

Ferguson collected a ball that bounced over a defender’s leg and beat Sharon Springs goalkeeper

Katie Weyant cleanly for the game’s first goal. But the 5-12-2 Spartans hung tough against their fellow Western Athletic Conference opponent.

The Falcons, 13-4-1, travel downstate to play Section IX champion John A. Coleman in Saturday’s regional finals. That game is set for Middletown High School.