Prior Lake senior forward Teagan Jurek can score in plenty of ways for the Lakers, but even she admitted, “I’m not a header person. … I don’t think I’ve ever headed the ball this season.”

But when it counted most — with 10 minutes remaining in Prior Lake’s first state quarterfinal appearance since 2002 — Jurek dashed to the near post for a glancing header, redirecting senior forward Ellie Ohlmann’s corner kick into the back of Lakeville North’s net.

The Minnesota State Mankato commit’s 13th goal of the year put No. 4-seeded Prior Lake ahead 2-1 over the No. 5 Panthers. That stood as the final score of the Class 3A quarterfinal hosted at Monticello High School, booking Prior Lake a spot in Wednesday’s semifinal against No. 1 seed Wayzata.

“[State] was always the goal, but I think it’s kind of surreal that it’s actually happening,” senior midfielder Gianna Stiehm said.

Four minutes into the match, another Minnesota State Mankato commit, senior midfielder Lauren Schindler, opened the scoring for the Lakers. Junior forward Ali Torres threaded a curving pass to Schindler, whose first touch took her between a pair of Panthers defenders for a side-netting strike.

The Panthers (12-4-3) managed to equalize with less than 10 minutes left in the first half, thanks to junior Brynn Koehnen pouncing on the end of sophomore midfielder Avery Lopez’s service into the 6-yard box. Jurek even admitted “that scared us” going into halftime.

The Lakers have weathered tough patches, not just in individual games but in their season as a whole. There was a 13-day stretch in September when Prior Lake picked up just one win and five losses, including a 2-0 loss to Lakeville North and a 1-0 defeat to Eagan, both fellow South Suburban Conference teams joining the Lakers in the Class 3A state tournament.

“I feel like if we played easier teams on the way up, we wouldn’t be ready for this,” Stiehm said.

In that stretch, the Lakers also fell to Minnetonka and Chanhassen, two teams they had to beat in their section tournament to reach state. “We exorcized all of our demons,” coach Phil Walczak said. Well, almost all of them — “We’d love anther chance at [No. 3] Eagan.”

“[Midseason] we kind of succumbed to a little bit of the pressure of expectation,” Walczak said. “When that goal happened for them, we kind of turned into that team that was stressed under pressure again.

“What’s been great for us is that we have had that experience over the course of the season. So it wasn’t a question of being able or knowing how to recover, it was just whether or not we were going to.”

Safe to say they did — senior defender Kendall Young muscled Koehnen off another close chance, and the Lakers’ back line shut down a Lakeville North squad making its 13th trip to the state tournament since 2005.

Walczak, a Prior Lake grad himself, took over the program this year. He previously coached at Cretin-Derham Hall but knew an opening to coach at his alma mater was rare. He finds himself leading a deep squad that, in addition to Jurek and Schindler, includes Ohlmann, a Drake commit, and senior defenders Mataya Smith and Taylor Hendrickson, both committed to Concordia (St. Paul).

“I’ve been around a lot of programs, and we knew right away that we had something that could be special,” Walczak said. “We as a group just needed to come together to be able to see that.”

Class 3A

Eagan 1, Mounds View 0: The third-seeded Wildcats, on their 12th trip to state and third in a row, returned to the state semifinals thanks to a second-half goal from junior forward Stella Triplett against the Mustangs at Shakopee West Middle School. Eagan (15-2-2) will face No. 2 Stillwater on Wednesday and is pursuing its fourth state championship; the others came in 2014, 2015 and 2017.

Class 1A

St. Cloud Cathedral 1, St. Paul Academy 0: Nora Simones scored the only goal of the game, moving the No. 3 seed Crusaders into a semifinal Wednesday against second seed Watertown-Mayer at U.S. Bank Stadium. Cathedral, at state for the fourth time in five years, is seeking its first state championship.