Blue Valley Northwest rallies past Maize in Class 6A girls state soccer semifinal

Hat tricks are nothing new for Cece Kizer. The Blue Valley Northwest senior forward wasn’t sure how many she’d had even this season. Even so, Friday night was something special.

Kizer scored three goals in a span of 10 minutes, 15 seconds late in the second half, helping the Huskies erase a one-goal deficit and charge into the Class 6A state title game with a 4-2 win over the Maize Eagles at the College Boulevard Activity Center.

The two-time defending champion Huskies, 18-1-1, will face Washburn Rural, 19-1, Saturday at 2 p.m. in the title match.

“It’s amazing,” Kizer said. “It’s still kind of surreal. It’s weird that I got three chances and they all went in.”

Maybe not so weird. Kizer now has a team-leading 33 goals on the season to go along with her team-leading 16 assists. All three of her goals on Friday followed the same script. She broke wide, got into a one-on-one situation, received an accurate pass, beat her defender and then shot low to score.

“I just look up and see where the keeper is and I place it where I think I have the best chance of finding the back of the net,” Kizer said.

Maize seemingly put Northwest’s title streak into serious doubt in the second half. After a scoreless first half and a long goal from Northwest’s Lauren Beischel, Maize scored two goals in a six-minute span to take a 2-1 lead with just 15 minutes remaining.

But the Kizer and the Huskies prevailed again.

Washburn Rural 2, Shawnee Mission West 1

As the minutes clicked off the clock, Shawnee Mission West’s chances to equalize seemingly increased. None of those chances, however, ended in a goal.

The Vikings, as a result, saw their state title hopes fall in a 2-1 loss to the Washburn Rural Junior Blues in the Class 6A state semifinals at the College Boulevard Activity Center. West will now face Maize at noon Saturday.

“I’m proud of how hard our girls worked,” West coach Sarah Gonzalez said. “Rural played a great game and we just couldn’t get it done. But we worked hard the whole time and they fought for it to the end.”

The Vikings tied the game at 1 with just more than six minutes remaining in the first half when Hannah Miller got a pass from Morgan Mauk and beat Rural’s Kelly Lemke with her right foot. It was the first postseason goal allowed by the Blues, who had outscored their previous three tournament opponents 19-0.

Rural got the deciding goal just four minutes into the second half. Viking goalkeeper Alyssa Gregory made a stellar save, but Macyn Decker followed the play and headed in the rebound.

The Vikings then made several runs at tying the match. Perhaps their best chance came on Laura Florez’s missile from just outside the box that bounced off Lemke’s hands, head and the crossbar before somehow finding rest outside of the goal.

Six minutes later, Lemke made a leaping save of another Florez shot toward the upper right hand corner. The Vikings got a clean look at the goal from close range in the waning minutes, but the shot went high.

This story was originally published May 29, 2015 at 10:04 PM with the headline "Blue Valley Northwest rallies past Maize in Class 6A girls state soccer semifinal."