Tucson Sabino’s aggressive girls soccer team had every reason to believe it was destined to advance to the second round of its state tournament after forcing overtime against its opponent.  

Ball control and momentum were on Sabino’s side, especially when it scored with 71 seconds remaining in regulation. That goal leveled the game at 1 and seemed to demoralize Glendale Apollo, the higher seed in this first round Division II thriller.  

But Apollo had a lot of fight left in it despite playing with a depleted bench and resting its hopes for a victory on a couple of freshmen. After 100 minutes of play, including two scoreless overtime periods, Apollo and Sabino went to penalty kicks, where freshman defender Olivia Tapia helped Apollo leave the game feeling warm and fuzzy on a chilly Tuesday night.

In the eighth round of the penalty kicks, Tapia, with her heart racing, converted her first high school penalty attempt, giving Apollo the 7-6 sudden death penalty kick victory.

“I was scared,” said Tapia about making the long walk to the 8-yard penalty kick mark.

But before making contact, Tapia purposely looked to her right to see if she could get the goalkeeper to lean in that direction.

Her plan worked, as Tapia went to her left to help send her team to the second round, where No. 4 seed Apollo will host No. 5 seed Scottsdale Arcadia on Saturday at 2 p.m. Apollo’s players wrongly believed that their game against Sabino ended in the seventh round of the penalty kicks, however.

In that round, with the score tied at 6, junior goalkeeper Mariah Perez blocked Sabino’s attempt, prompting Apollo’s players to run toward Perez and start celebrating. But Apollo’s players were unaware that they had to break the tie in sudden death before they could really start celebrating.

The party for Apollo really started when Tapia took care of business. The penalty kick shooters for each team in the third round were the only ones that misfired during the first five rounds.

Apollo appeared headed toward a victory in regulation with the help of a first half goal by freshman sensation Danny Fonseca, who scored her 40^th goal of the season in the 10^th minute. On the scoring play, Fonseca used her speed to get to a ball Sabino’s goalkeeper failed to corral.

Sabino controlled possession for most of the game, but it couldn’t unlock Apollo’s back line, partly because Apollo’s sweeper, Yesenia Zavala, did a fabulous job of organizing her defenders. Perez also had a good game in goal for Apollo, committing just two errors.

But the second error — not clearing a free kick — gave Sabino the break it needed to score its first goal. Facing an open net, Kelsey Jenkins was in the right spot to put away the mistake with 1:11 left in regulation.

“That was pretty depressing to give up a goal with a minute and 11 seconds remaining,” Apollo’s first-year coach Amanda Wright said. “But I know how tough our girls are and how much fight they have.”

Fonseca credited Apollo’s former head coach, Michael Varela, for the fighting spirit her team displayed on Tuesday.

Varela is an U.S. Army intelligence officer who is going to be deployed to Afghanistan. He would have been proud of the way Apollo protected its home territory, where Apollo hasn’t lost in the past three seasons.

On Saturday, Apollo will get one more chance this season to create another great memory at home.