Guyer and Denton very nearly froze each other out before settling for a 1-1 tie at Bronco Field on Friday night.

With Guyer (10-3-3, 2-2-2) favored to top Denton (3-6-3, 1-3-2), the Lady Broncos remained close with an impressive display of stubborn defense. What might have been an easy win for Guyer turned into a tie for Denton after 80 minutes of back-and-forth play.

The game began in a race against deteriorating weather, and both teams struggled to thaw out and get on track. The first half began with a Guyer possession but the ball quickly changed hands as each team worked to maintain more than a single offensive push at a time. Turnover followed turnover and soon 20 minutes had passed without significant action.

It quickly became apparent that in the stare down between the Lady Wildcats and the Lady Broncos, the losing team would be the one that made the first mistake. With that idea guiding them, neither team even flirted with the idea of risky play.

Offense was at a premium, and the match soon showed all the elements of a track meet. When scoring chances came, they came rarely and were quickly done away with.

Denton’s single best opportunity came with under nine minutes left in the first half as the Lady Broncos struggled to score before the buzzer. A Denton defenseman took a long shot at the goal, sending the ball over the crowd of opposing players and straight to the goalkeeper from 50 yards out. Though Guyer sophomore goalie Fallon Renfroe stopped the shot, it bounced up and behind her to go out of bounds, giving Denton a corner kick.

With freshman Mikala Farmer kicking across the front of the goal, the Denton offense sent the ball hurtling toward the net from close range. With Guyer defense falling on the ball and sending a rebound back out, Denton attackers shot it back again and again. Somehow, Renfroe never even touched the ball in the melee as her teammates collapsed on the attack. Guyer eventually cleared the ball, stealing an early opportunity from Denton.

With the crisis averted, however, it was Guyer’s turn. After dominating offensively for most of the first half, the Lady Broncos found themselves on the defensive. The tables had clearly turned, and now it was Denton that couldn’t clear the ball past midfield as Guyer consistently brought it back home for more shots.

Efforts from both teams failed to return any successful scoring opportunities, as they remained deadlocked 0-0 at the half.

The second half was even closer than the first. Both teams took equal time pushing deep into their opponent’s territory. As the game began to draw to a close, it appeared that all that time spent in the cold was going to finish without a result. But it was there, with nine minutes left, that Denton made a mistake.

Setting up for a corner kick beside the Denton goal, Guyer attackers jostled for position. Spotting foul play during the set up, the referee disallowed a Guyer goal, judged a penalty, then gave Guyer another scoring chance with a penalty kick.

“That was the weirdest call I’ve ever seen,” Guyer head coach Marc Cox noted. “[The referee] called the foul without the whistle and after the fact.”

Guyer’s coach wasn’t the only one on the field who thought the call was suspect.

“You never, hardly ever, have a penalty [on a corner kick],” said Denton head coach Iseed Khoury, who argued against the call so vehemently that he was given a yellow card. “I thought it was a very poor call to be honest with you. It just was not a penalty kick situation.”

Nevertheless, with less than 10 minutes in the game, Guyer sophomore Kelsey Hodges scored a penalty kick against Denton junior goalkeeper Marlee Ross to put the Lady Wildcats up 1-0.

With things looking grim for Denton, the Lady Broncos refused to back down. As their pace grew more frantic and their offense more aggressive, the Lady Broncos found themselves outside the Guyer box setting up a free kick. And, with 1:20 left, senior Katie Dugan shot the free kick up and over the crowd and into the net.

“These things you work on during practice and pray they work during games,” Khoury said. “That time, [Dugan] pinned it into the back of the net and we were certainly happy to see that.”

Guyer fought back immediately, but the game ended in a 1-1 tie.

“We feel pretty lousy about this one,” Cox said. “The girls played an incredible game. We dominated the running play. I guess it's our story this year.”

Guyer will host Saginaw on Tuesday while Denton plays at Saginaw Boswell.