With about six teammates and defenders surrounding her, Bri Cagle couldn’t recount how she scored the winning goal in Saturday’s 5A-Region III girls soccer championship game.

All Clear Lake’s senior defender knew was she finally finished a header off a corner kick at a most opportune time.

A play the Falcons had tried without much success the entire season finally worked with 5:34 left against Kingwood, when Cagle scored off a header following Theresa Halle’s assist at Deer Park ISD’s Abshier Stadium and gave Clear Lake a 2-1 victory and a berth in its first state tournament.

“Honestly I really don’t know what happened,” said Cagle, the only usual senior starter on a team featuring six freshmen and seven sophomores. “We’ve been working on that all season. My job is to get my head on the back of those and I did it. There was nothing to it; I just got lucky. … It was all Theresa. She played one of the best balls in I’ve ever seen.

“We just tried to finish our chance. We didn’t have a lot of those and we didn’t have a lot of those.”

Clear Lake (21-3-4) will play Plano East (23-3-3) in a state semifinal at 11 a.m. Thursday in Round Rock.

“We talked all season long that we were gonna have a big game and we were gonna need a goal,” Clear Lake coach Andy Gaworecki said. “We’ve had situations in tie games where we thought we were gonna need that goal, and we couldn’t have needed it more than we did right now. …

“Bri’s finished a million of those in practice and not one of them in the season. I couldn’t have written it better if I’d tried to.”

Raina Koller put the Falcons ahead with 11:09 left in the first half, a kick that deflected off the top of the Kingwood (24-4) goalie’s right hand and in.

The Falcons managed to implement their defensive plan of keeping Kingwood off the outside most of the day. The Mustangs’ only goal came from that position with 28:56 left, when Hope Ward – shut down most of the day by Cagle – scored off a cross from her sideline.

It was only the sixth goal allowed by Clear Lake this season.

“We try to push the ball forward and get it wide as much as humanly possible,” Gaworecki said. “We like to serve and try to finish crosses and create opportunities. We don’t care if it’s the prettiest goal or the ugliest goal. We’ll take it. …

“(Ward’s) goal set us back a little bit,” Gaworecki said. “I think it set us back on our heels when we were scored on, then they kept pressuring and we got a fantastic finish.”

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