The Bluejay girls wrapped up a winless Valley season with the finish of one game and a complete other at Wausau East last Tuesday.
Merrill had trailed East 2-0 back on May 19 when lightning forced the postponement of the finish. The final 20 minutes played out scoreless.
When they started a fresh contest on Tuesday, East tallied two in the first 10 minutes, then added another goal in the 71st minute for a 3-0 triumph.
“The game went okay,” MHS coach Steph Nelson said. “The score really should have been 1-0, but they got a soft one in.
“We had a lot of offense running, but we couldn’t get a decent shot off; we had some, but they were pretty much just shots where we had a tiny opening and a light shot was taken right at the keeper. We got out-shot, but really they didn’t out-play us that much. We just need to clean up the mistakes in critical times and places.”
Allyson Dehnel and Mallory Wanserski scored the first two goals of both games in that order. Sydney Blaskowski netted the late one Tuesday.
Taylor Hudzinski made seven saves in the first game and two saves in the second. East’s Clara Baumann came up with four stops in the first game and one in the second.
The 7th-seeded Jays open the playoffs with Thursday’s 5:00 p.m. game at 2nd-seed Marshfield.
“We’ve got a plan, and if we can stick to the plan and execute, then we have a great shot at winning,” Nelson said.