Sailors silenced in final

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NEWPORT BEACH — Star goalie Sami Hill says that when she plays road games she likes to silence the crowd.

It sure seemed rather quiet at Newport Harbor High after the senior’s peformance Thursday, when Dos Pueblos of Goleta won the Holiday Cup.

Hill’s 17 saves silenced the Sailors, who lost, 7-4, in the championship game. She said she was happy the Chargers earned the title in her final year at Dos Pueblos before going on to UCLA.

Newport Harbor Coach Bill Barnett said Hill is the best goalie in CIF at this point in the season. Still he wasn’t overly impressed with her game against the Sailors (7-1).

“I don’t think we tested her as much as we should’ve,” Barnett said. “We threw a lot balls right at her.”

Barnett also said the Tars were careless with the ball at times. “We threw the ball away too many times,” he said.

That didn’t help the Sailors in their biggest match of the season. It was a battle of unbeatens. Dos Pueblos (11-0) entered as the top-ranked team in the CIF Southern Section Division I preseason coaches’ poll and Newport Harbor is No. 2.

The Chargers looked to keep the rankings in place as they raced out to a 3-0 lead.

The Newport Harbor crowd was already quiet at that point, only responding with amazement from Hill’s saves or a goal from Kiley Neushul.

“The biggest thing is that we were able to press them a little bit and counter them, kind of give them a taste of what they do to everybody else,” Dos Puelbos Coach Danelle Little said. “They shut down teams like crazy when they do that.”

Instead, Newport was shut down. The Sailors had scored 39 goals in three wins in the Holiday Cup, which included a 6-2 win over Laguna Beach in the semifinals.

Senior Kaleigh Gilchrist, bound for USC, had three goals and two assists in the semifinal match. She scored twice against Dos Pueblos. Colleen McCall and Kate Klippert had one goal each for Newport Harbor against the Chargers. Goalie Krissy Burger had a solid game for the Sailors with nine saves.

After the game, Barnett didn’t want to spend too much time talking about the loss.

“Right now the only thing we are interested in is Wednesday night,” he said.

The Sailors open Sunset League play against Los Alamitos in a big game scheduled for 6:10 p.m. at Newport Harbor.