Moriarty’s girls soccer team ended its season with two double-overtime draws—and that could have been a factor in the Lady Pintos not getting a playoff berth.
Moriarty had its share of opportunities to secure a win Oct. 18 against the visiting Pojoaque Valley Elkettes.
In their final home game of the season, the Lady Pintos scored first and continued attacking Pojoaque until the final whistle.
But after their first goal, the Lady Pintos couldn’t find the back of the net and had to settle on a double-overtime 1-1 draw.
“I feel like we’ve worked really hard this season, and it just sucks to end our last home game like this,” Brooklyn Olivas said.
Olivas got Moriarty on the board off a corner kick in the 18th minute.
The corner kick—one of Moriarty’s eight corners in the first half—curled into a crowd in front of the goal and Olivas poked it past Pojoaque’s goalkeeper just before the two collided.
“It was really weird because it came in at an angle and I was just kind of in the perfect place,” Olivas said. “I like tapped it past the goalie’s hands, not like directly through her hands but to where her face went right into my knee, and she was like crying, and I felt bad.”
Moriarty had three consecutive corner kicks in the 22nd minute and two consecutive corners in the 38th but none of those set-pieces produced any points and the score remained 1-0 at halftime.
Two minutes into the second half, Pojoaque tied the score 1-1.
The rest of the second half saw the Lady Pintos countering with several attacks that garnered three more corners and two indirect free kicks. But Moriarty couldn’t come up with the go-ahead goal and the score remained knotted at the end of regulation.
Moriarty’s Madison Richards trying to settle the ball against Pojoaque Valley, Oct. 18, 2022. Photos by Ger Demarest.
In the first OT, Madison Richards fired a pair of shots that were tantalizingly close to producing a goal: one sliced a hair wide and the other hit the left upright.
In the second OT, Moriarty had two more corners that came up empty. In the waning minutes, Olivas took a long-range shot that was saved by Pojoaque’s keeper.
“I feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities,” Moriarty head coach Val Luker said. “I think the girls played hard, we were looking for a win, but that’s where we’re at.”
Moriarty settled for another frustrating draw in its final game—a 0-0 tie in double overtime on Oct. 20 at Taos.
After the Pojoaque game, Luker was optimistic that the Lady Pintos would make the playoffs. But when the New Mexico Activities Association released its postseason championship brackets on Oct. 23, Moriarty was not included.
The Lady Pintos finished the season with a 7-9-3 overall record, 2-2-2 in district.
