The Blake School girls soccer team felt it was robbed during Friday’s 1-0 loss to Mahtomedi in the Class 2A title game at U.S. Bank Stadium. Zephyrs coach Dave Wald didn’t offer much disagreement.
“I feel like we stole one, in a way,” said the Zephyrs’ 20th-year bench boss after his claimed its second consecutive state crown. “But we get better and better and play harder and harder. The pride I feel in these guys is amazing.”
Mahtomedi defender Eloise Taylor, 4, takes control of the ball past Blake forward Lauren Breyer, 2, during the second half of the Class 2A girls soccer championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)
Crucial to the larceny was Mahtomedi goalkeeper Harlow Berger, who made a dozen saves, several of them spectacular. Blake held a 19-6 shot advantage and took 10 of the contest’s 12 corner kicks but couldn’t solve No. 43 in the yellow jersey.
Blake’s Livi Abboud-Young entered with 34 goals scored, the last being Wednesday’s winner during a semifinal victory over Holy Angels. She and her teammates forced Berger to make seven saves before intermission, with virtually every Bears touch being purposeful and attack-oriented.
“I was really hoping we’d play Holy Angels because I didn’t think we matched up well with Blake,” said Wald, who lost his four-player back line to graduation after last season but saw the Zephyrs close this year’s campaign with shutouts in 11 of its last 13 games.
“If you’d asked me at the beginning of the season if we’d be here, I’d have said no way.”
Berger was expected to split time for a second consecutive campaign with senior classmate Jacque Worden, who’s headed to play for the University of North Dakota. Worden got hurt playing flag football, however, and Berger, a former basketball player, took over full time.
Friday, the 6-foot-3 keeper charged off her line to make sliding stops on loose balls at the edge of the penalty area. She leaped to tip line-drive shots over the crossbar, and jumped to pluck corner-kick offerings from the air. Berger crushed punts and kicks, some of the latter taken near midfield after fouls on her teammates, which allowed Mahtomedi to threaten her Blake counterpart, Reese Aafedt, from more than 50 yards away.
“It just seemed like she was everywhere in the net,” said Aafedt, who made four saves but couldn’t prevent her team from falling to 16-1-4. “She had such good footwork to get to any ball, and she used her height as a strength, which was good for their defense overall.”
Audrey Aflakpi cheers as she watches her sister, Mahtomedi’s Elise Aflakpi, defeat Blake 1-0 to win the Class 2A girls soccer championship at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)
Mahtomedi (17-2-2) was being outshot, 19-4, when it scored 15 minutes after intermission. Rose Prescott passed from the center of the field to Kennedee Cummins on the right side. From there, Cummins found striker Elise Aflakpi, who was facing away from the goal and had a defender on her hip atop the penalty area.
Aflakpi spun 180 degrees to her right and dribbled into a small patch of open space. Without time to reposition, the junior chose to shoot with her toe, knocking the ball off the left post, then off the right post and, according to the officials, across the line at some point during its journey.
“I saw it release from her foot and I … thought it was going completely wide,” Aafedt said. “Then it hit the post and hit the other post and I didn’t personally think it went in, but it was called otherwise.”
Said Blake coach Jocelyn Keller: “Soccer’s an unfortunate game where you can outplay and outshoot and out-defend a team and then that happens.”
With 7 minutes remaining, Berger slid to stop a cross and felt her shoulder pop out of joint. An agonized roll to one side pushed the wing back into place, but the goalkeeper wore a sling postgame and said she was glad she only had to make two more saves the rest of the way.
“I’m not sure how it happened and it was really painful, but I knew I could move it,” said Berger, a University of St. Thomas commit who described the title clash as her busiest game of the season. “Every time I screamed, the pain kind of went away, so I did that every time the ball came to me.”
Wald said he pondered retirement from coaching about five years ago, but then the Zephyrs began what he called “a run of amazing people” that continued with the current team’s energy and enthusiasm. Berger was in the midst of that culture, the coach noted.
“Harlow is an amazing person and a game-changer,” Wald said. “With that many young kids on the field, we don’t do this without them knowing they have Harlow behind them.”
Mahtomedi poses with the trophy after winning the Class 2A girls soccer championship at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025. (Craig Lassig / Special to the Pioneer Press)
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