The Cedarcrest High School soccer team won the Cascade Conference championship and South Whidbey placed fourth, but the Red Wolves are probably fine with not having to play the Falcons again.

1A South Whidbey battled 2A Cedarcrest (9-1-2, 10-3-3) as well as any team in the league, holding the Red Wolves to a 0-0 tie April 4 before falling 1-0 in Langley Friday, April 27, in the regular season finale.

South Whidbey (6-5-1, 8-5-2) finished second among 1A schools in the league standings to King’s (9-2-1, 11-2-2) and claimed the No. 2 seed into the district tournament.

The Falcons begin postseason play at home with Mount Baker (2-11-2), the No. 3 1A team from the Northwest League, at 6 p.m. Monday, April 30. The Mountaineers’ record is a bit deceiving because their league includes eight 2A and 2 3A schools.

Cedarcrest 1, South Whidbey 0

“All in all, I was very proud of our guys’ game last night,” coach Emerson Robbins said. “I feel confident that if we can play like this in the playoffs and get and stay healthy, we should be able to make a deep run.”

The Cedarcrest match was rugged, but the Falcons kept their cool, according to Robbins.

The Red Wolves received five yellow cards to none for the Falcons.

“I am extremely proud of our players for not retaliating and for taking the high road,” Robbins said.

The consistently tough South Whidbey defense gave up a “cheap and very uncharacteristic goal” early, Robbins said. It turned out to be the game winner.

Neither team had many opportunities to tally; each recorded only six shots.

The Falcons were hampered by the loss of striker Michael Lux, who has 15 goals this season, to an injury early in the contest.

Other than the one goal, the South Whidbey defense was “outstanding,” according to Robbins.

He praised the play of defenders Lake Smith, Ari Rohan, Andrew Curtis, Joey Lane and Thomas Simms.

“Silas Batiste, our center mid played another great game, as he almost always does,” Robbins added. “Silas and Aidan O’Brien are consistently our team’s best distributors in the middle, which is why they both play center mid. Silas won a ton of tackles and won ball after ball for us in the middle last night.”

Robbins also noted the play of Cormac Workman, Graham Colar and Reilly McVay.