A pair of familiar foes will face off in Monday’s Class A girls soccer state championship after Elkhorn South upset top-seeded Lincoln Southwest 1-0 and Omaha Marian defeated Kearney 2-1 with a goal in the final 70 seconds Friday at Morrison Stadium.
The Storm and Crusaders split their two earlier matchups, with Elkhorn South claiming a 1-0 win in overtime and Marian taking the return game 2-0.
“Playing a team three times is difficult,” Marian coach Teresa DeGeorge said. “In the last three weeks, their team has really grown, but we have as well. I expect it to be a big battle.”
Elkhorn South 1, Lincoln Southwest 0
Elkhorn South only had two shots on goal against undefeated Lincoln Southwest, but Ellie Sonderman took full advantage of the opportunity she got.
Sonderman was in the right place at the right time as the ball deflected off of Silver Hawk goalkeeper Tanyn Anderson to Sonderman at the edge of the 18-yard box, and she buried her shot into the open net. Sonderman’s goal was the only one in the match as the fifth-seeded Storm upended the No. 1 Silver Hawks 1-0 Friday in a girls Class A state soccer semifinal.
“I saw the goalie coming out of the box and I knew she couldn’t pick it up, so I was just running through it and it happened to bounce perfectly, so I just took my space,” Sonderman said.
Elkhorn South (17-3), which snapped Lincoln Southwest’s 29-game winning streak, advances to the championship game for the first time since 2019 (Class B) and it will play in the Class A title game for the first time in program history.
“It’s honestly emotional,” Elkhorn South coach Lindsay Aliano said. “It’s like you work so hard and you want the girls to be able to experience this. And I tell them all the time, it’s like, I can coach as long as I want to, but they only get four years.
“And so they’re the ones that are responsible for getting themselves to this point, to get to play in the state tournament, to get to play in a state championship game. And so, it’s just being so happy for them.”
Elkhorn South goalkeeper Kenzie Thompson got the ball to Sonderman in the 50th minute on a punt.
“There was kind of a gust of wind going there for the second half, so I saw that if I could really get my foot into it, we had a chance to get something on it because I know we’ve got speed up top,” Thompson said.
Sonderman’s goal was just the third Lincoln Southwest (17-1) had given up all season, and it marked the first time this season the Silver Hawks had trailed.
Thompson and the Storm defenders ensured Sonderman’s goal was all Elkhorn South needed. The junior keeper made six saves, all in the second half, to post her 13th shutout of the season. Her final save of the game came when she denied Ansley Throener, who scored a record 59 goals this season, on a shot with 20 seconds remaining.
Lincoln Southwest had not been shut out since a 1-0 loss to Gretna East on April 7, 2025, which was the last time the Silver Hawks had lost.
“(Our defenders) did everything we asked them to do, and we couldn’t have had a better defensive unit,” Aliano said.
Lindsay Aliano shares what made her emotional in the final seconds of the Class A state semifinal game against Lincoln Southwest. pic.twitter.com/cwhmscbGNk
— Hurrdat Sports (@HurrdatSports) May 15, 2026
Omaha Marian 2, Kearney 1
Omaha Marian applied pressure against Kearney the whole second half, and Cooper Dally made it pay off in the 79th minute.
Dally took a pass from Skylar Farley and put her shot into the net to give the Crusaders a late 2-1 win over the Bearcats and send Marian to its second-straight Class A state championship game.
“We’ve been working all season on the second effort, and the game’s never over until it’s over, so I think we really highlighted that (Friday),” Dally said.
The Crusaders (16-3) controlled possession for most of the second half, holding a 7-1 advantage in shots on goal and an 8-0 edge in corner kicks in the final 40 minutes. But the match stayed tied until a little more than 1 minute left when Marian broke through thanks to Dally.
“We kept knocking on the door, one was bound to go in, but we’ve had a lot of not so much luck at the state tournament over the years,” Marian coach Teresa DeGeorge said. “The girls just kept getting after it, really good second efforts when it was needed.”
Marian captain Paige Miller, who has missed this season with an injury, addressed her teammates at halftime with the match tied 1-1.
“Everybody pulls energy from her, and she’s so positive,” DeGeorge said of Miller. “She’s such a good captain, and some of the things that we were doing were Paige-like, which was second effort, which was that last play for the goal.”
The Bearcats (17-3) took the lead in the 16th minute when Hallie Garner spun around a pair of Marian defenders in the box and shot it past keeper Audrey Connealy.
The Crusaders answered less than two minutes later when Mya Sennett headed in a shot into the upper-left corner of the net to square the match at 1-all.
Audrey Connealy made five saves for the Crusaders.
Maylin Pohl made six of her 10 saves in the second half for Kearney.
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