COLORADO SPRINGS — Eventually, the tightness in Gianna Weiner’s stomach faded. The tightness in her chest did not.
At several-minute intervals — much quicker than she’d normally come off the pitch — she’d trudge to the sidelines at Weidner Field on Tuesday night, her shirt tugged up to cover a cough. An Evergreen High assistant coach would unearth an inhaler from his pocket. She’d take a few puffs.
And then Weiner would trot back in, because even the vacant contents of her stomach couldn’t prevent her from leading Evergreen’s attack on Wednesday night.
“She’s a competitor,” Evergreen senior Nadia Leunig said, smiling. “She’s not going to let a little vomit stop her.”
Indeed, neither Mullen High’s defenders nor her own gasping immune system could stop Weiner at Weidner. The Evergreen senior authored a Colorado-style in leading the No. 6 Cougars to a 3-0 win over No. 12 Mullen to clinch their third straight Class 4A title. She woke up Tuesday morning to find she was rather ill at a rather inopportune time. And began throwing up. And continued throwing up. And stopped throwing up on the hour-and-a-half bus ride from Evergreen to Colorado Springs. And then felt like throwing up again just before the state championship match.
It was never a question in her mind, though, that she’d play.
“It was kinda more just like, ‘Alright, this is 80 minutes of your last game playing high school,'” Weiner said. “‘So, honestly, just do what you can.'”
She did plenty. All of 40 seconds in, senior Leunig set her up for the first goal of the evening to gain an early foothold. Later in the first half, shortly after an inhaler break, Weiner pushed the pace on an attack and looped a picture-perfect pass downfield to a sprinting sophomore Autumn Carter for an assist to put the Cougars up 2-0.
“She is one of the strongest — physically and mentally — people, I’ve ever met,” junior goalie Avery Mahnken said.
Those two goals, plus a final pretty second-half goal from junior Elle Buenning, were more than enough for Evergreen on this night. In large part, that was because of Manhken, who came into Tuesday’s final expecting a strong Mullen program to give her plenty of work around the net. She got everything she bargained for — and the goalkeeper met the moment with a flurry of second-half saves, including a one-handed leaping swat of a penalty kick from Mullen’s Maci Martinez.
Evergreen’s backline did the rest, with a clear second-half game plan to play keep-away from a Mullen team that was shut out despite dominating possession. The Cougars simply punted the ball out of bounds at a near-comical level through the final 40 minutes, papercuts that bled the clock dry. It infuriated Mullen’s student section. It was also ruthlessly effective.
Key to that stand was Leunig, who Evergreen coach Peter Jeans described as the “player of the season.”
“She was the best player on the field,” Jeans said, “by a long shot.”
This was a well-oiled machine from start to finish, capping off a season that was far from smooth. Evergreen’s year (16-2-3) was led by Leunig, Weiner and a group of seniors that “had that expectation” of a third title weighing on them all season, as Jeans said. Much greater pressures weighed, too.
In September, in a day that left lingering shockwaves through a tight-knit mountain community, an Evergreen High student injured two of his fellow students and shot and killed himself. The school year that followed, as Leunig said, has been “nothing like we would have ever expected.” School, for Leunig, brought stress. Soccer, an outlet, helped that melt away.
“Checking in with each other was very important,” Leunig said. “Just being there for each other, so we have strength as one.
“And when we started the season,” she continued, “there was something bigger to play for. You weren’t just playing to win. We’re really playing for our community, for our team, and just Evergreen, in general.”
A 3-1 loss to Air Academy preceded a five-game run through the Class 4A Tournament, as the Cougars knocked off No. 2 seed Rampart 3-2 in the semifinals before putting away Mullen on Tuesday night. They flashed three-finger signs through the minutes and pictures after the buzzer, mementos of a long journey that culminated in a three-peat at Weidner.
And the final, of the trio, seemed the sweetest.
“For them to show perseverance and toughness and grit games out, but also to play their best at the end of the season,” Jeans said, “just shows so much heart. And I think, like, that purpose.”
