ATHERTON — As Burlingame High girls soccer coach Phillip De Rosa got used to the idea of calling his Panthers champions, he could breathe a sigh of relief that his team had survived the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division’s gauntlet.

After paying homage to archrival Carlmont, whose streak of eight straight Bay titles ended when top-ranked Burlingame won 4-0 at No. 10 Menlo-Atherton on Thursday afternoon, De Rosa took a step back to assess how some of his competitors might fare in the Central Coast Section playoffs.

“Woodside and Carlmont, they may not have won this league here, but they’re going to move in CCS,” the Burlingame coach said.

Entering the week, second-ranked Woodside and No. 4 Aragon were tied for fourth place. But with two wins (and in particular, a 1-0 victory over Carlmont), Woodside has dramatically improved its playoff outlook. The Wildcats now control their own fate. They are now tied for second place with Carlmont, and own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Scots.

“Now, we become big fans of Burlingame next week,” Woodside coach Jose Navarrete said, with an eye toward Carlmont’s game at Burlingame on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, fifth-ranked Carlmont still appears close to a lock for one of the Bay’s three automatic CCS bids. All this, despite suffering what could have been a disastrous loss to Woodside AND having to visit Burlingame.

Why are the Scots still sitting comfortably? Talk to Aragon.

A rare two-loss week by the Dons (who had two TOTAL losses entering the week) has caused the most turbulence in the Bay’s playoff picture. Aragon’s 1-0 loss to Burlingame on Tuesday wasn’t the doozy—that designation goes to the Dons’ 3-0 defeat at the hands of Menlo School on Thursday.

That shocker (shocking because of the score, mostly, but also the result) may have put the Dons’ postseason hopes in jeopardy AND given Menlo’s slim CCS aspirations a huge shot of adrenaline.

Aragon can pretty much forget about securing one of the Bay’s three automatic bids. Still at 23 points, the Dons trail Carlmont and Woodside by six points. Yes, Aragon might very well win its final games against M-A and No. 9 San Mateo. But the Dons would then need either Carlmont or Woodside to lose both of its games.

In the case of a tie at 29 points, Aragon is looking good. But it seems unlikely that it’ll come to that. If forced to turn to an at-large bid, the Dons had better hope they win their last two games. Otherwise … the guess here is they sit the postseason out.

No. 7 Menlo, which pulled within one point of the fourth-place Dons, may need to beat BOTH Woodside and Burlingame to have a shot at an-at large bid. The Burlingame contest — with the chance to earn CCS bonus points by beating a league champion — becomes a great opportunity for the Knights to finish with a bang.

Menlo coach Donoson Fitzgerald could hardly contain himself when talking about how his offensively-challenged team scored THREE goals against Aragon (which had only allowed two goals or more twice all year).

“Yee-haw! It was a long time coming,” Fitzgerald said. “We needed to win. It was wonderful. I’m Phillip De Rosa for a day.”

Around the rest of the Bay:

Sequoia scored more in one game than it had in its last nine games combined. Carolyn Bittner scored for the second straight game, pushing her season total to six goals. And back in the field after a stint as the subsitute goalie, Vanessa Garcia gave the Cherokees’ offense a jolt by posting her fourth goal.

But Sequoia’s 2-2 draw with No. 8 Terra Nova was marred slightly because the Cherokees had a 2-0 halftime lead over a Tigers’ side that had been playing great soccer lately (two straight wins).

Terra Nova’s height proved advantageous down the stretch, with Miranda Bradley and Dionne Dettmer heading in corner kicks.

Sequoia coach Melissa Schmidt said one header was particularly ferocious: “If my goalie had come out, she would’ve been severely injured.”

Asked to comment on Terra Nova’s physical style of play, Schmidt referenced her own playing days in Europe.

“Someone is teaching them how to push well and hide it,” laughed Schmidt, calling that a commonly-taught technique across the Atlantic. “Those girls have it down.”

Jim Kelly has known the time was coming. With two straight Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division defeats and three divisional losses to date (both firsts in his tenure), the Carlmont High girls soccer coach has almost become resigned to it.

His program’s run of eight straight Bay championships is coming to an end.

Let’s say that again (the first part, that is): Eight straight Bay championships. Incredible.

Nine seasons ago, Kelly came in with a bang—downing then-powerhouse Menlo-Atherton to secure the title for the Scots in his first season. And then the championships kept coming … and coming … and coming.

In sum, Kelly lost a TOTAL of three Bay games entering this season.

But with red-hot Burlingame quickly distancing itself from its foes—the Panthers can clinch the Bay title with their next win or tie—Kelly took a few moments Wednesday to reflect on a special streak that is about to run its course.

“The whole time, I was aware it was an amazing thing,” he said. “I’ve always known it was going to come to an end. For eight years it was like, ‘When is it going to end?’ You could never think you’d do it again.”

Asked the origins of the Scots’ dominance, Kelly pointed toward the time when he assisted Michael Flynn at PAL-rival Aragon, of all teams.

“I’ll never forget the game I coached against Carlmont when I was (in my second year) at Aragon,” he said. “I remember looking at the talent Carlmont had … and I realized if I ever had the chance, I had to coach that team.”

Of the Scots’ success, Kelly said: “It’s mostly the players. … As far as memories, I have more memories of the players than the particular games we played.” On that note, he said the offensive stars, in particular, were what fueled the streak.

“In the eight years I did it, I always had some really, really top-flight forwards,” Kelly related.

When asked what stood out to him about the run, Kelly immediately listed “the back-to-back years we were undefeated and untied.” Then, he fondly remembered a four-year stretch, spanning the freshman-through-senior years of Mara Fintzi and Sammy Kirberg, which included the two perfect Bay seasons and two straight Central Coast Section Division I championships.

But Kelly got the feeling early on that this might be the season someone finally topped his side. After the Scots went 0-1-2 in their first stretch against Aragon, Woodside and Burlingame, the Carlmont coach knew an offense that too often couldn’t finish its scoring opportunities would be “the challenge.”

“(That) stretch pretty much told me that, yup, this is going to be pretty tough to do if we can’t score,” he said.

Reminded that the Scots scored just twice in those three games, Kelly laughed: “Two goals, but plenty of opportunities.”

This season, Kelly has also had to come to grips with something Carlmont opponents suffered repeatedly at the hands of the Scots throughout the years–the come-from-ahead loss.

“There’s all kinds of firsts (this season). I’ve given up leads for ties, but I don’t think I’ve ever lost a lead and lost a victory,” he said. “That’s a tough pill to swallow.”

As for seeing the hopes of a ninth straight title gradually slip away this season, the Carlmont coach said: “You’ve got to give a lot of credit to the other teams, and especially Burlingame. They’ve always been in second place, and they’ve always been a tough opponent where games could go one way or another.”

Professing pride in how the Bay landscape has become full of dangerous teams, Kelly referenced his preseason prediction that Woodside would be the team no one wants to play.

“Woodside’s defense is phenomenal,” he continued. “(And) Aragon’s loaded with talent, and they’re only going to get better.”

Even as Carlmont cedes its throne, Kelly said the mentality of his side’s opponents would likely remain the same for the near future. Carlmont has always been the team to beat. Even as the streak ends, Kelly believes opponents will continue to use that run as motivation and inspiration, just as they did when they took their shot at the Scots over the years.

“I don’t think that’s going to change,” he said.

REDWOOD CITY — At first, no one knew just what to make of Wednesday’s stunning turn of events.

Incredibly, the Carlmont High boys soccer team LOST to Menlo School, 1-0. That alone had the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division’s coaches buzzing.

But another realization quickly followed that created an even bigger stir. Carlmont’s loss along with Sequoia’s 0-0 draw with Burlingame AND Woodside’s 3-1 win over Terra Nova meant the Bay championship picture and the division’s postseason-bid allotment had just taken a hair-pin turn.

Standings on the sidelines at Sequoia with Burlingame coach Fred Cesano and Sequoia coach Kurt Devlin, we all started to do the math. First Carlmont coach Jason Selli, and then Woodside coach Juan Caballero joined the conversation via cell phone.

Sequoia gained a point and would finish at 22, with a bye on Friday. Carlmont stayed at 19. And Woodside jumped to 19. Both Carlmont and Woodside have games on Friday, so they could potentially reach 22 to tie Sequoia (and they will be favored to do so).

What happens then?

“It’s a mess, that’s what it is,” Carlmont’s Selli said. “I have absolutely no idea. I really don’t know.”

Selli’s immediate thoughts echoed those of his counterparts. The chief concern among some of the coaches was how a potential three-way tie would effect the Bay’s mini-tournament next week. The division’s top-two finishers earn automatic Central Coast Section postseason bids, and all along, the leaders have wanted to avoid leaving their CCS hopes tied to winning the play-in of the Bay’s third- through sixth-place teams.

Caballero and Selli were trying to figure how the day’s results might effect whether their teams would finish first, second or third. While we all suspected that the first tiebreaker would be head-to-head competition, no one had immediate answers as to whether that would be the case with a three-way tie.

(A subsequent conversation with PAL Commissioner Terry Stogner and a look at the sport’s bylaws revealed that head-to-head would indeed be the tiebreaker, for two or three teams.)

But in the heat of the moment, there were more questions than answers. And a bit of panic. When the Bay ballooned to 11 teams last season, evidently no one expected a potential three-way championship. The crowning highlight of the division’s set-up–the CCS play-in tournament–has had teams scrambling to both avoid it (the top-two teams) and to find a way into it (the middle-of-the-pack sides) both last season and this year. And it’s all about that third playoff bid.

“I don’t want to go to the (Bay) playoff,” Woodside’s Caballero chipped in. “Any team can be beat in this division. The four teams going in (to the play-in) are all powerhouses. Anyone can be beat. Everyone just wants to get away from that four team tournament.”

In the midst of the speculation, 32-year coaching veteran Ed Huber saddles up to chat with the group. Huber can’t believe Carlmont lost to Menlo. And then, when informed of the Bay standings and pondering a three-way championship, he points out the third-place team would actually have the same record as the first-place team.

Huber, a former Sequoia and Woodside coach, can’t resist a chance to needle Burlingame’s Cesano (whose team has been eying the play-in as its opportunity to qualify for CCS).

“Maybe there won’t even be a playoff,” Huber says to his buddy.

Quickly retorts Cesano: “There better be a playoff. We put that in (the bylaws).”

The coolest coach was without question Sequoia’s Devlin. Having lost control of their own fate with regards to the Bay championship by virtue of their 1-1 tie with Menlo on Monday, the Cherokees were sitting pretty by post-game Wednesday. And they didn’t even have to win (or score) to do it.

“We didn’t get the goal, but the main objective was to get the point to get into CCS,” said Devlin, whose team would’ve clinched at least second place and a playoff bid with a tie Wednesday, regardless of any other outcomes. “I told the guys, ‘I’ll see you Monday at practice.’”

Meanwhile, Cesano was pleased his Panthers kept their poise against a CCS-caliber opponent. After fending off several Sequoia attacks in the first half, Burlingame gradually plowed through to take control by game’s end.

“We broke ‘em down with our power game,” Cesano told his players afterwards. “We kept at it. We’ve just gotta get this team into CCS. That just shows you what we can do. No complaints.”

Defending-champion Burlingame clinched a spot in next week’s mini-tournament with the draw, and Cesano was pleased to think about the CCS bonus points his side would receive for tying a league champion.

Assessing the wild Bay finish, Sequoia’s Devlin pointed toward upstart Menlo, which has an impressive three-game run of tying Terra Nova and Sequoia and then beating Carlmont. “The bottom teams are starting to sting the top ones,” he said.

Menlo coach Giles Scott couldn’t contain his excitement when asked about downing the Scots.

“Yeah, it was awesome,” he said. “I thought we totally deserved it.”

Having clearly established itself as the division’s heartbreaker down the stretch, Menlo is finally playing up to its coach’s expectations.

“That’s where we should be,” said Scott, whose team is clinging onto long-shot hopes of making the play-in tournament, needing a win over Woodside and two Terra Nova losses. “We’re as good as those results. That’s how good we are. We just underperformed before.”

Woodside can take the Bay’s second seed and earn an automatic CCS spot by beating Menlo on Friday. But Caballero wasn’t any too excited at the thought of needing his team to get through the surging Knights to do it.

“Oh man, these guys? They’re tough,” Caballero said of Menlo. “How come they gotta start now? It’s gonna be a coin flip.”

A few quotes that didn’t make the newspaper:

Burlingame girls soccer coach Phillip De Rosa, to Woodside counterpart Jose Navarrete at midfield following Burlingame’s 1-0 win in a pulsating showdown: “Jose, that was as good of a game as they come.”

More from De Rosa, whose team scored with 4 minutes left when Adrianna Ortiz punched in a cross from Jenny Haggarty: “This was one of the best soccer games you ever wanted to see. (Woodside) was extremely well-coached. I knew it was going to come down to something like this.”

And, from Navarrete: “We were committed to not letting Ortiz or Haggarty beat us.”

More from Navarrete, whose fourth-place team hosts third-place Aragon this week: “The Tuesday game at Woodside is going to be do or die for us. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Carlmont girls soccer coach Jim Kelly, whose second-place team trails Burlingame by just three points, despite an uncharacteristically modest attack: “We’re hanging by a thread.”

More from Kelly, on defending the PAL Bay crown (the Scots have won eight straight), and on how much he respects Woodside: “I don’t feel any pressure. I don’t think we have the firepower. For us to beat Woodside, it would take a miracle. It really would.”

Menlo girls soccer coach Donoson Fitzgerald, whose team sits fifth in the Bay, one point behind Woodside, despite scoring just three goals in its last six games: “The opportunity is there.”

Burlingame boys soccer coach Fred Cesano, on tenacious forward/stopper Landis Nasser, who notched two goals and an assist in a 6-1 win over Capuchino: “It was all Landis today. Wherever he plays, he’s going to get people to hate him.”

Menlo-Atherton boys soccer coach Jacob Pickard, on how injuries and academic ineligibility have crippled his side’s designs on a run at the Bay title: “All those expectations just kind of got blown out the window. We’re still going for them, but it just makes our job a lot, a lot harder.”

Half Moon Bay boys soccer coach Terry Fisher, whose team had 11 players at the start of Saturday’s game against Menlo School: “Considerations when scheduling a Saturday game: We have six guys working today. We have one at Popeye’s, we have one at RoundTable, we have one at Safeway, we have one at Burger King, we have one at Sam’s Coffee Shop, we have one at Tres Amigos.”

More from Fisher, as three more players trickled in one by one during the first half of the 11 a.m. game: “Thank God he’s here. (louder) We’re waiting for you. You might be the star of the game soon. … Buenos dias. Good morning. Get ready to go. Your alarm clock didn’t go off?”

The biggest winner of Friday afternoon’s Carlmont vs. Woodside High boys soccer showdown wasn’t even on the field.

By day’s end, it was Sequoia that capitalized the most from the 1-1 tie at Woodside. The Cherokees moved into sole possession of first place in the Peninsula Athletic League’s Bay Division by virtue of their 3-0 win over Hillsdale and the draw by erstwhile leader Carlmont.

Not that Sequoia coach Kurt Devlin was celebrating a Bay title quite yet.

“I think it’s wide open. It’s anybody’s,” said Devlin, whose team beat the Scots despite being out-shot and dominated down the stretch. “I think Carlmont might have the inside track. … Carlmont’s a difficult team. They’re big, they’re fast, they’re athletic. They’re not easy to play with at all.”

But thanks largely to its 1-0 victory over the Scots a week ago, Sequoia (8-7-3, 5-0-2 PAL Bay) has a one-point lead over Carlmont (17 points to 16), with three games remaining for each side.

Woodside, ranked No. 3 in the County, remains in the thick of the race. The Wildcats (12 points) sit in third place, but they are the only one of the leaders to have four games left (contrary to the error printed in Saturday’s San Mateo County Times). Sequoia and Carlmont (10-3-2, 5-1-1) have already had their byes.

Carlmont coach Jason Selli knew his team lost a grand opportunity to deliver a blow to Woodside, and said it’s Sequoia that is calling the shots now.

“If we can win the rest of our games, we have the second spot locked up,” Selli said. “(Sequoia is) in the driver’s seat for 1. We’re in the driver’s seat for 2.”

The top two regular-season finishers get automatic Central Coast Section playoff bids. The division’s third postseason slot goes to the winner of an intra-division playoff that pits the Bay’s third- through sixth-place teams.

Woodside coach Juan Caballero now believes Sequoia will almost certainly finish first or second, leaving his side and top-ranked Carlmont in a heated race to avoid the Bay’s postseason play-in.

“One of us is going to be up there,” he said, “just one of us.”

Selli and Caballero were quick to assess sixth-ranked Sequoia’s remaining schedule, mining for a potential upset that would reopen the door for their own title run.

Sequoia has already played Woodside, Terra Nova, Carlmont and Menlo-Atherton–the four teams directly below the Cherokees in the Bay standings. That leaves sixth-place Burlingame, which visits Sequoia on Jan. 30, as the challengers’ best hope to move up.

“Burlingame’s now my best friend,” said Selli, an ironic development, because of the harsh words that led to the cancellation of the postgame handshake following Carlmont’s 1-0 win over the Panthers on Wednesday. “But we still have to take care of our business.”

Devlin sounded just as worried about his team’s next game, a visit to San Mateo, which is tied for last place with Capuchino.

“(They’re) fighting relegation to go down to the Ocean. We don’t have an easy road by any means,” the Sequoia coach said. “They’re difficult because they need points any way possible.”

Devlin’s counterpart in Wednesday’s contest is a familiar face. San Mateo first-year coach Mike Keller has been an assistant on Devlin’s Canada College coaching staff.

Woodside (8-2-6, 3-0-3) needs Sequoia or Carlmont to lose points in order to have a shot at first or second.

Should any of the Bay’s top-three capsize down the stretch, Devlin said the side no one’s talking about from the North County may be the party-crasher.

“Terra Nova is going to roll about six games in a row,” he said. “I think they could finish winning out.”

No. 5 Terra Nova (10-4-1, 3-2-1) sits in fifth place at 10 points, and has already had its bye. No. 8 Menlo-Atherton (fourth place, 11 points) faces Woodside and Terra Nova next week.

CARLMONT — The proclamation stuck out because of its boldness, for sure, but also for its timing. Imagine my surprise when I received this mid-December voice mail.

“I’m letting you know right now that, on the 5th, we’re going to beat Carlmont.”

The voice was that of Damian Cohen, coach of Woodside Priory’s girls soccer team.

At that time, Cohen’s Panthers were mired in a 1-6 start. Sure, they had proved their resiliency by hanging with some of the Bay Area’s best teams, and with an undermanned side at that. And yes, the Panthers were expecting their full complement of players back after the New Year (from Olympic Development Program and club team commitments, as well as from injury).

But nonetheless, Cohen stepped out on what appeared to be quite a limb by predicting a victory over Carlmont.

Keep in mind: the prediction came when the Scots were still undefeated–before their 2-1 loss to Burlingame on Dec. 20. (Incidentally, Cohen was in attendance at that match of PAL Bay leaders.) And the sixth-year Priory coach was all too aware of Carlmont’s prodigious feats of recents seasons (eight straight PAL Bay titles, CCS titles in 2004-05 and 05-06) as a former Scots assistant and three-year JV coach.

Given all that … it turns out Cohen knew what he was talking about.

In a dominant performance, Priory scored twice in the first 5 minutes to lay the groundwork for a stunning, 3-0 victory at Carlmont.

The match, originally scheduled for Jan. 5 and subsequently postponed a week, was expected to be the Panthers’ last true test of the regular season (with the defending West Bay Athletic League champs widely expected to run the table this season).

Talk about acing the test.

“We came out fast,” a smiling Cohen said afterwards. “We came out on fire. We were ready to win. I told you we were going to win. I wasn’t going to call you if I didn’t think we were going to win.”

And then came Carlmont coach Jim Kelly’s postgame analysis, which had to rank nearly as surprising as Cohen’s prediction of month ago.

“I figured Woodside Priory would beat us,” said Kelly, who couldn’t recall ever losing by three goals in his nine seasons. “They’re talented and well-coached, and we’ve been struggling.”

“They’re very, very organized,” continued Kelly, whose team dropped to 8-2-3. “He’s a great coach.”

The fallout of the contest, as it pertains to Priory (now 5-6), seems obvious:

1. Take the Panthers’ early results with a heavy dose of salt: Other than its two losses to Los Altos, a now fully-loaded Panthers side has the pop to field some significant advantages over St. Francis, Palo Alto, Mitty and Sacred Heart Prep, all of whom it suffered defeats to.

2. Go ahead and skyrocket Priory up the County rankings: the Panthers were slotted at No. 9 before the holiday break. While even that low of a ranking may have been a stretch for the less-than-full-strength Priory, it’s perfectly clear the side from Portola Valley belongs top-five. At least.

3. The Panthers have the weapons to compete with, if not outright defeat, any PAL Bay side: Gone are the days when Priory loses 3-0 to Woodside, or 4-0 to Menlo School, as it did a year ago. Saturday’s showing proved that, and much more.

4. One victory does not a championship make: the Panthers’ designs on the program’s first-ever Central Coast Section title seem attainable, especially because Priory is ticketed for the Division III (weakest) bracket. But the reason the Panthers gave Carlmont fits is because of the shear numbers of playmakers. If any of them is injured ….

(And three quick bits of Carlmont fallout, as well, according to Kelly):

5. “We have to fix what happened in the first 5 minutes of both halves.”

6. “They need to learn how to solve problems.”

7. “Just like every game, we’re there, but we can’t finish it.”

But Saturday belonged to Priory. So much so, that it’s tough to believe they can’t improve leaps and bounds on last season’s historic run (the Panthers had never before won a CCS game). And improvement means a CCS title-game appearance, at a minimum.

“If we go into CCS with 15 healthy players, we can win CCS,” Cohen said Saturday, with a sly grin.

What?! Hedging your bets, coach? No brash predictions?

OK. OK. I’ll wait for my phone to ring.