In sports, you’ll see championships decided by series, best of three, five, or even seven. Have you ever heard of best of 11? The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk girls soccer team was a 2-1 winner over Mount Pleasant in the second round of the postseason by accomplishing just that Wednesday. The Hawks and Panthers were even through regulation, two overtimes and 10 penalty kicks, before Mid-Prairie scored the game-winner in the 11^th round of a heavyweight prize fight.

It was the Golden Hawks that took a 1-0 lead right before half when Zoey Curtiss beat the Panther defense in the 36^th minute. Mid-Prairie took that advantage into the break and made it stand up until the final moments of the match. The Panthers got the equalizer in the 78^th minute to send proceedings to overtime at 1-1. Both teams played the two extra 10 minute periods in a deadlock.

Mid-Prairie connected on four of their five penalties in the first PK round, with finishes from Kyla Karnes, Curtiss, Sam Wunderlich and Meadow Flynn, only to see Mount Pleasant match it. In tense moments, each team would miss their next five attempts, before Lydia Beachy stepped up and drove a ball to the back of the net for the Hawks and Niva Helmuth knocked down the final Panther PK and the celebration was on. Helmuth and Beachy spoke after the match about the win.

Beachy said, “I felt good in my kick as soon as I hit it. I was like ‘this is hard enough that I don’t think she’ll be able to stop it’. It was just a rush of relief when it actually went in. (In the celebration), I got trampled. It was fun! Totally worth it! We wanted this so badly. I just did not want our season to end yet, we’re not ready for it to be done.”

Helmuth continued, “I just think about how the team is relying on me. They work so hard and I think ‘I’m going to do this for them’. (The celebration) was so fun! So much energy! I was on the bottom of that pile.”

The Golden Hawks had eight shots on goal and four corner kicks. Helmuth made 10 total saves, four in the shoot out. With the win, Mid-Prairie is now 6-10-3 as the Panthers end their season at 8-6-1. The Hawks advance to the Class 1A Regional Semifinals Wednesday to meet Mediapolis on the road.