Bishop Gorman holds off Faith Lutheran for Southern Nevada soccer crown

Bishop Gorman’s girls soccer team built a 3-0 lead and looked to be cruising in the Southern Nevada Championship game at Rancho.

Then Faith Lutheran made things uncomfortable for the Desert Region champs.

The Mountain Region champion Crusaders scored a pair of goals in an eight-minute span but couldn’t complete the comeback as Gorman held on for a 3-2 win. Both teams had won region titles on Saturday.

“I think it’s tough for both teams to have to come out after emotional wins Saturday and try to keep it up for 80 minutes,” Gorman coach Doug Borgel said. “We had a little lapse, but luckily we had kind of built enough of a lead to hang on there at the end.”

Faith Lutheran (20-3) plays Desert Region runner-up Coronado (19-1-3) in a quarterfinal game at 7 p.m. Thursday at Faith Lutheran. Gorman (25-0-1) gets a bye into Friday’s semifinals when it will play the winner of Thursday’s game between Douglas and Palo Verde.

Gorman controlled nearly the entire first half, taking six shots and earning a 2-0 lead on a pair of goals by Gianna Gourley.

Gourley broke through in the 28th minute when she took a pass from Jaden Terrana, settled the ball and put a shot inside the near post.

In the 36th minute, Terrana put a corner kick toward the near post and Gourley was able to redirect the ball past the goalkeeper for the 2-0 lead.

“We did a good job pressing them and would have liked to put a couple more away to sort of ease the tension,” Borgel said. “That first half we really dominated, played well, deserved to have the lead. And then our goal was to get that third goal and hopefully they’d go away, but they didn’t.”

The Crusaders got on the board in the 61st minute when Ariana Gronauer’s free kick from just outside the penalty box went off the goalkeeper’s hands and dribbled into the net.

Then in the 29th minute, the Crusaders got a penalty kick from Madison Stenslie to pull within a goal. Faith Lutheran had chances in the closing minutes, but Gorman was able to hang on.

“I knew we could do it if we dug deep,” Terrana said. “Even though they wanted it, we wanted it more.”

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Contact prep sports editor Damon Seiters at dseiters@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4587. Follow @DamonSeiters on Twitter.