Pearl City takes down Castle 1-0, advances to OIA title game against Kaiser

Jan 24, 2014 | PC Sports

The last time the Pearl City Lady Chargers won an OIA girls championship soccer title was back in 2008. Lady Chargers Head Coach Frank Baumholtz III coached the 2008 champions and is excited for the opportunity to take his 2014 squad to the big dance after defeating Castle in the semifinals 4-1 on penalty kicks last night at Kapolei High School.

"I'm just really excited for the kids," said Baumholtz. "Four weeks ago I told these kids your a good team. They didn't believe it."

Pearl City, the #5 West seed, will play Kaiser, the OIA East Champion and #1 East seed in tonight's championship game scheduled for 6:30pm at Kapolei High School. Kaiser defeated Kapolei 2-1 in the second game of Thursday night's semifinal doubleheader at Kapolei High School.

In last night's first semifinal match-up, both Pearl City and Castle played to a 0-0 tie after 80 minutes of regulation play and two 10 minute overtime periods before entering the penalty kick phase to determine the winner.

Pearl City replaced starting goalie Ariela Bali for the much taller Jordan Gomes to defend the goal during the penalty kicks. Coach Baumholtz felt the need to put in Gomes for her height which would give the Lady Chargers an advantage against higher shots on goal aimed under the top cross bar and in the corners.

"During the season we had a number of balls that hit the goal post in regulation and Bali couldn't get to them," Baumholtz said. "Because they hit the post we just kept playing. I started thinking, if we get in a shootout, and I've lost to Punahou in shoot outs before where they put the ball right under the bar. So we thought, Jordan, you're the tallest girl on this team, you have to learn to be the goalie. She didn't want to do it. It was probably was the first of January when we started our shoot outs and I just said, in the goal, and she just jumped in. We would shoot at her, and have our boys come down and shoot at her sometimes. There's percentages on which way the shooters are going to go. I told her to go with the percentages, and if you're in doubt, just go like hell and whichever way you decide to go."

Gomes did her job, making saves with the score 2-1 and 3-1 in Pearl City's favor. The Lady Chargers won the game on a goal by Randi Fontes that got past Castle goalie Brandee Lane to put Pearl City up 4-1.

Tasha Inong, Erin Okuna, Haley Honda and Randi Fontes all converted penalty kicks for the Lady Chargers. Castle's Vanessa Chinen scored the only penalty kick for the Lady Knights.

Bali has played great defending the goal for the Lady Chargers and hasn't allowed a goal in three playoff games preceding tonight's championship game.

You can bet coach Baumholtz and his staff will have the Lady Chargers well prepared and ready to play their best in tonight's championship. Baumholtz has been there before. He's been coaching at Pearl City High School since 1988, first as an assistant, and later as the head coach. He's guided the Lady Chargers to multiple state championships and see's a bright future for his kids in the coming years.

"I've been in the state championship game eight times, my teams have." Baumholtz said. "We've won five, that's pretty good odds. This group here has a great future, as long as they keep getting stronger. Great kids. We also have great assistant coaches who do a really good job."