Bentonville West holds off 6A-West foe Fayetteville for Arkansas 6A girls soccer title

By Jeff Halpern | Photos by Tommy Land 

BENTON — Bentonville West’s Tianna Jones came through with the biggest goal of her career Saturday afternoon in a 2-1 victory over Fayetteville in the Class 6A girls soccer state championship game at Everett Field. 

Jones scored from the right side of the goal with 9:47 left to put the Wolverines (17-6) ahead for good and earn MVP honors of the state championship.

“It doesn’t matter I scored,” said Jones who had a very unselfish attitude after receiving the MVP award. “I’m happy we scored and pulled it off this year.”

The win avenges a 3-0 loss in last year’s state title game for the Wolveriness. Fayetteville finishes the season 12-3-2.

Bentonville West head coach Kerry Castillo said Jones was able to take advantage of the attention Fayetteville paid to Kate Carter, who scored the game-tying goal at the 27:28 mark in the first half.

“I thought Tianna would be able to get behind the play because when Kate came down the field, you could see she was drawing some attention in the middle and gave Tianna some 1-on-1 room,” said Castillo.

“We talked a lot about being selfless and leadership and we got a lot of energy from everyone.”

After getting the go-ahead goal, Bentonville West had to hold off some late challenges from Fayetteville in order to win the game.

Fayetteville had some chances late getting two corner kicks in a 40-second span starting at the 8:00 mark,, but the first one was deflected out of bounds by Bentonville West. The second one went to freshman Abby Heinzelmann, whose shot was stopped by the goalie Maysa Willis.

“The main thing was we had to be alert when the ball was in the air and be the aggressive team,” said Castillo. “They are so good on corner kicks and restarts.”

Fayetteville had five corner kicks in the second half but couldn’t generate any offense.

“We had a couple of chances ourselves,” said Fayetteville head coach Joe Thoma. “Bentonville West had that look in their eyes and were very tough to get through. They made it very difficult to get that second goal.

Jones said, “We’ve been working on defending their corners and free kicks and it showed. I think I’m so full of joy. I don’t know what to say.”

Fayetteville scored at the 32:24 mark of the first half when Jayden Tyler scored off a header before Carter scored the tying goal.

Jones and Castillo said conditioning played a role in winning the game.

“We have a nutritionist work with us and stay in constant contact to make sure that we’re winning the last 15 minutes of the game,” said Castillo. “They designed a plan for us, and we made sure we were all over their goalie.”

Jones said, ““I think we worked our butts off this season, and we showed it and we had been working on our nutrition. Our nutritionist should he happy we scored in the last nine minutes because that is what we had been working all year.”