AURORA — Grandview girls soccer? More of the same old, same old … as in dominance.
The defending Class 5A state champion Wolves continued their glorious run on another windy, cold late afternoon and early evening at Legacy Stadium, this time halting Doherty of Colorado Springs 6-0 on Friday in the second round of the playoffs.
With only four seniors and more than half a dozen Division I commitments over multiple grades, this is a program that has taken over the state and is in prime position to extend what could be one of the high-end runs in history.
But Wolves coach Tari Wood cautioned, “I hope it’s not too much over-confidence. We need to work hard and keep going.”
Now 15-0-1 in 2016 and ranked nationally, the Wolves are 33-1-2 since the beginning of 2015 and have not allowed a goal in seven consecutive playoff matches.
They have won 14 consecutive matches this season and outscored the opposition by an aggregate 69-6.
Wood points out that most of her team’s goals have been scored in the second half of games, and Friday the Wolves found the back of the goal five times after halftime while overcoming a stellar effort by Spartans keeper Riley Furbush.
Grandview’s Jessica Hixson, who scored twice, said Furbush “is a great goalie, but we were able to break her down.”
After living in the Spartans’ end for much of the match, Madalynn Germann’s first-half goal set the lead, then Mandi Duggan, Allie Zerr and Nicole Lyubenko joined Hixson in scoring. And the Grandview defense yielded only one shot for Doherty, which ended 11-5-1. The Spartans fell to the Wolves 8-1 in a March nonleague opener.
“We tend to wear teams down,” Wood said. “They get tired and we keep playing. We’ve done that basically all season.”
And in trying to repeat, Hixson said, “we lost some great players (from 2015), and gained some great players, and we’ve kept some great players. And there are many more to come.”
Neil H. Devlin: @neildevlin or ndevlin@denverpost.com
