By CHENG SIO

Karol Palecki walked around midfield in a daze with both hands on the back of his head. A couple of Greenwood High School boys soccer players wasted no time taking their shirts off. Many of them were coming to grips with what happened. "After the final whistle, all I thought was, 'Well, this is over. I gave it all I had,'" senior Kevin Galindo said. Greenwood's season came to an abrupt end as the top-seeded Eagles lost 3-1 to the visiting Mauldin Mavericks in the first round of the Class AAAA Upper State playoffs Tuesday. "Terrible," goalkeeper Landon Uldrick said.

The Eagles finished the season 15-4. Despite the disappointing end, Greenwood still had a successful season. "It's been (three) years without a region championship," Eagles coach John Kinard said. "Our ultimate goal was to get back a region championship and we did this. Yes, we would've liked to have gone further in the playoffs, but that's fate. We'll just take it from there and we'll build on this from this year and move on to next year." Greenwood was 15-23 in its previous two seasons. As hard as this loss was for many Eagles to swallow, it was probably more difficult considering their vaunted defense was the cause of their downfall. Greenwood entered the contest having yielded just nine goals while recording 12 shutouts, including a 1-0 exhibition win over none other than Mauldin.