Girls Soccer: San Ramon Valley Ends Eagles' Season

No. 2 San Ramon Valley 2, No. 10 Clayton Valley 0

However you want to judge a soccer team — speed, strength, technical ability, tactics — was better than in all aspects in its North Coast Section second round match Saturday night.

The Wolves left Clayton Valley with a convincing 2-0 victory. Allie Dutto scored early in the opening half to put San Ramon on top and Shannon Hennessy added another in the second to secure the Wolves' place in the semifinals.

The Eagles, winners of the Diablo Valley Athletic League, season ended with the loss. They finish with a record of 16-6-2.

"Overall, the season was great," Clayton Valley coach Scott Booth said. "But to compete with San Ramon we have to have everyone healthy and everyone here but we didn't have that."

It took just eight minutes for San Ramon to score its first goal. Allie Begin broke down the right wing and connected on a long pass across the face of the goal to a streaking Dutto and the freshman netted the close range opportunity to make it 1-0.

San Ramon (17-3-4) wouldn't score again in the first half, but the Wolves completely dominated the first 40 minutes. Nearly the entire half was played in the Clayton Valley end. The Eagles didn't have a shot until the 34th minute and the Wolves finished the half with a 9-1 shot advantage.

"The girls were really nervous and (San Ramon) is at leavel we are trying to get to," Booth said. "We talked a lot about the things they were going to do out there — their speed of play, their quick transitions — but we still made errors on those specific things and paid for them."

As dominating a performance as it was, San Ramon only led by one and missed a number of chances to double the advantage. The closest came when Hannah Koski hit the inside of the crossbar in the 41st minute, but the ball bounced straight down, not in the goal, and the Wolves were unable to finish the rebound.

Clayton Valley (16-6-2) played better to begin the second half, compiling a handful of half-chances, but never really threatened San Ramon's goal.

The Eagles' comeback hopes were diminished in the 60th minute when Hennessy headed home a corner kick, scoring her second goal of the playoffs after not scoring at all during the regular season.

"We were really pumped from the very start," Hennessy said. "We had a little patch of weirdness but I think we dealt with it well and are ready for the semi's."

Maybe no player on the Wolves roster deserved the goal more than Hennessy, who defensively did a brilliant job containing Clayton Valley's best player, Kelsey Booth.

"She was huge tonight," Jones said about his junior midfielder. "She's the backbone of everything we do and she's been awesome."

When asked if she thought her team could win the NCS championship, Hennessy said, "We don't like to say we're going to because we don't want to jinx it but if we play our best we definitely can."

To reach the final, San Ramon will need to go on the road again and beat No. 6 Heritage on Wednesday at 7 p.m.