Eldorado, Chap play to deadlock

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Feb. 1, 2002 | 9:45 a.m.

Two months and 36 games after they began regular-season play, Chaparral and Eldorado find themselves exactly where they started: tied atop the Northeast Division girls soccer standings.

The Cowboys and Sundevils played to their second 1-1 tie of the season on Thursday, leaving both teams 6-0-2 in league play with two games remaining.

"That's the way you'd like it to be -- tied coming down to the end," Eldorado coach Gerald Pentsil said. "Our teams are so alike it's unbelievable."

Assuming both teams win out next week, the Southeast championship and the accompanying top seed for the upcoming 4A Sunrise Region tournament will be determined by a series of tiebreakers, possibly ending with a coin flip.

"Right now I'm more concerned about our improvement than our seeding," Chaparral coach Dan Schell said. "We need to be more focused on making those improvements and adjustments before the playoffs."

Schell's team, which rallied for the tie in last month's meeting at Eldorado, appeared in control this time around at home. The Cowboys (9-4-3 overall) held the Sundevils (15-3-4) without a shot for the game's first 25 minutes, and went up 1-0 on Courtney Sobrero's 28th goal of the season -- a tip-in off a corner kick from Jessica Torres in the 20th minute.

But the visitors capitalized on a mistake midway through the second half to knot things up. Eldorado's Jennifer Merrell picked off a pass from Chaparral goalkeeper Ashley Bennett and sent the ball ahead to teammate Melissa Claborn, who buried an 18-yard blast over Bennett's head for the tie.

"Our team never lets down," Claborn said. "If we're down, we still get pumped up and our hopes are always high."

Claborn normally finds herself on the other end of Sundevil scoring plays, with many of her team-leading assist total going to forward Erin Pictum (28 goals). On Thursday, Chaparral locked down on Pictum defensively, but still walked away without the win.