Central downs Laurel for record 11th girls soccer title

Emerson Dull, the team’s high-scoring freshman forward who has lit up the stat sheet this season, didn’t think the Rams were living up to it early in Saturday’s state championship match at Amend Park against rival and fellow Class A power Laurel.

So, as coach John Krebs recalled, she let him know about it. There was frustration but also fearlessness in the way she put it, Krebs said — and he noted that she was completely right, even as someone who was playing her first season of high school soccer.

“We took her out halfway through the first half because I could see that she was stressed for whatever reason on the field,” Krebs said. “She told me that she was frustrated that we were playing boot ball all the time, playing balls into channels that nobody’s getting to. So she’s running like crazy for no reason.

“And because of that, we changed some things up in the way that we were going to play. … Takes a lot of courage as a freshman to come and say she doesn’t like what we’re doing.”

But when you deliver in big moments like Dull does, you listen.

And there was no moment bigger for Central this season than Saturday.

Dull scored both of the Rams’ goals, propelling the Rams to a 2-1 win over the Locomotives in a showdown of unbeatens in the title match that won Central its 11th first-place trophy, breaking a tie with Whitefish’s boys to regain the crown as the most successful soccer program in Montana high school history.

In the third edition this season of one of the best soccer rivalries in the state, the Rams (13-0-2) — whose only draws of the season came at the hand of Laurel (11-1-4) — finally got over the hump against the Locos in a packed-to-the-gills Amend Park that had huge amounts of fans each way.

Marking the seventh time that Central and Laurel’s girls teams, who combined to win every state title in Class A from 2008-22, had ever met in the state title match, the Rams improved to 4-3 all-time when facing the Locos for all the marbles, with Dull capping her stellar freshman campaign by etching her name among Central’s many program legends as a state champion.

And if history is any indication, don’t expect this to be the last time Central and Laurel meet for a title in the near future, either.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had,” Dull said. “I can’t thank my teammates enough for making me a better player the way we work together. Can’t be beaten this season, and it shows by (winning) a state championship game.

“It’s been the best. I can’t thank them enough again. Without them, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Both the Rams and Locos have had strong underclassman cores all season, from Dull and goalkeeper Lorelai Hutzenbiler at Central (both freshmen) to Elly Poser (freshman) and Abigail Sparks (eighth-grader) at Laurel, among others, being some of the newest emerging stars at two of the state’s top talent-producing programs.

Laurel, which itself was going for title No. 6 this weekend, looked early in the match as if it was going to be the one to make Central blink first.

Much of the first half saw the Locos be more active in its attacking third and look like the more threatening team, with Hutzenbiler being forced to make multiple strong stops on Laurel’s charging front line.

However, it was Central which got on the board first against the run of play with 6:44 left in the first half through Dull, who got a touch on a loose ball in the 18-yard box that Laurel was unable to clear before it crossed over the goal line.

It didn’t faze Laurel, though, which got the goal it had been wanting at a better late than never time.

Darby Boehler equalized with the last kick of the first half, booting a shot from a tight angle over the outstretched arms of Hutzenbiler and off the post and in. Back to the familiar all-square it was— only this time with the potential for overtime and penalties.

“We played that team to two consecutive ties before this match,” Laurel coach Tom Maack said. “It was about 50 minutes into the match … (I thought) there’s going to be a mistake somewhere on the field on our end or on their end, where something’s going to be pivotal.

“And that’s what happened in that PK moment, right? Just one simple error.”

The moment that Maack is referring to ended up proving his intuition correct.

Dull, while threatening goal once again, forced a foul in the box with 20:18 remaining and converted the ensuing penalty kick to restore Central’s lead. It was a crucial moment that gave the hosts a surge of confidence, even while Laurel flung numbers forward to try and even the match yet again.

The Rams locked down defensively and held on from there, winning their second Class A title in three seasons in the process, too. Plus, following the Central boys’ Class A state title win earlier in the day, it also made it the second straight year that a school has swept the Class A soccer titles after Whitefish pulled off the double in 2023.

Dull, discouraged at the way things were going roughly an hour earlier, was emotionally embracing family, friends and teammates shortly after full-time. Krebs, Central’s first-year coach, joyfully high-fived just about anyone he saw after noting that he had “a lot of nerves” toward the end of the match moments earlier.

Krebs, Dull and her underclassman teammates won their first titles at Central on Saturday. But in re-establishing the Rams as the gold standard of Class A soccer, their maiden title victory may have been the program’s most important of them all.

“I wish I could say it was me. I mean, I don’t think it is,” Krebs said. “These girls put a lot of work in and they got rewarded for it today. … We started at the school and didn’t come out (to Amend) until halftime of the boys game and got walking through the halls, and all the trophies that are up on the walls is unreal. (It’s) a culture that’s at Central.”