WAIPAHU, Hawaii — For most of Thursday night’s match at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium, Marc Fournier’s goalkeeper training worked a little too well.
UC Riverside keeper Caela Kaio, a Kamehameha alumna and Leahi Soccer Club product who was trained extensively by UH assistant Fournier, stopped every shot headed her way for 70-plus minutes in a Big West contest the Rainbow Wahine had to win.
Finally, in the last 20 minutes, UH broke through for a wild 2-1 comeback victory with goals from Bailey Faulkner and Amber Gilbert to keep its Big West tournament hopes alive. The Wahine (6-4-3, 3-2-3 BWC) added three points to their resume to move into a tie for fifth place with two regular-season matches remaining. The top six qualify for the tournament.
For Riverside (2-7-7, 0-5-3), a team out of the running, the setting amounted to a proving ground for a local girl who missed out on a chance to play in front of her whole family two years ago because the Big West 2020 season was canceled due to the pandemic.
Kaio, a 2019 HHSAA state soccer champion with the Warriors, remained on the same field of that triumph well after the game to greet a few dozen supporters and take pictures. That the gathering happened in a sudden downpour did not seem to matter in the least.
“It was just bittersweet. We didn’t get the result we wanted tonight, but it was still my favorite game I ever played in my four years (at UCR),” said Kaio, who recorded eight saves.
She stopped a flurry of Rainbow Wahine shots early in the second half, when UH, desperate to get three points and down a goal from Kameron Henry’s strike in the 15th minute, unleashed midfielder Eliza Ammendolia from the bench and turned up its intensity as a unit.
“Honestly, I had so much adrenaline and I could hear the entire crowd,” Kaio said. “I had family on both sides of the stadium screaming. I was just trying to be as calm as I could in that situation and play my game and help the team play our game.”
Kaio stopped a close-range blast from Taylor Caporus in the 72nd minute, only to have it rebound to Faulkner, a graduate student who didn’t get much on a dribbled shot — but after Kaio deflected rocket after rocket, it was somehow the trickiest for her to handle and it trickled by her and into the net.
Faulkner could laugh about it afterward.
“It was a pretty bad shot, but honestly it was one of those (kind of) goals that was going to go in with how good that goalie was today,” Faulkner, a transfer from Loyola Chicago, said. “Kudos to her, but I’m glad it went in.”
UH forward Krista Peterson kept a possession alive along the goal line in the 80th minute and got it to Gilbert, who performed a slick back-footed reversal of direction in the box to set up a launch to the upper far post that Kaio didn’t have a chance to stop.
A relieved Michele Nagamine had nothing but praise for her afterward.
“She was phenomenal tonight. It’s like there was saran wrap all over the goal,” the UH coach said of the 5-foot-10 Kaio. “I’m really, really proud of the way that Caela played. I thought she led her team. She was the difference maker, and I definitely thought she was the MVP of her team tonight.”
McKenzie Moore, a former Hawaii player who had part-time starting experience for three years, played 69 minutes for the Highlanders against her old team and tallied two shots before leaving with an injury, a factor that Nagamine said helped swing the game.
UCR put three shots off the crossbar for the match and another off the post in the final minute. UH and keeper Lauren Marquez had to hold on for dear life for the final 2:46 after it lost Peterson to a red card — she kicked the ball away from the Highlanders after a whistle to earn her second yellow of the night.
UH will look to burnish its resume on senior day Sunday, 4 p.m., against Cal State Fullerton (7-5-5, 4-2-2), a team the Wahine have never beaten (0-8-1) as a Big West opponent.
Because of the red card, UH will miss Peterson for that game, to Nagamine’s lament.
“That … is an opportunity for (others) to step up, and for her to rest for the road. You know me, I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal,” she said.
The Wahine actually had a red card rescinded early in the second half due to video replay, a rarity. The head referee consulted a sideline monitor of a foul by defender Zoe Park on an attacking Highlander. It was determined that Gilbert had sprinted back in time to be considered a trailing defender, so Park was not the last line of defense and thus the play merited only a yellow card.
Some more photos of the match:
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.