Western Alamance girls soccer remains Alamance County’s last playoff team standing

Western Alamance is Alamance County’s last playoff team standing, and the Warriors’ next step was a Class 5-A East Region final showdown with Dixon at home, with a trip to the state championship game on the line.

That matchup carried even more weight because Western entered the week at 23-0 and had not allowed a goal through its first three playoff games. Dixon arrived with the same kind of postseason edge, also blanking every opponent it had faced in the bracket. The winner was set to move on to the state final at Durham County Memorial Stadium, where Hickory or South Point would be waiting May 28-30.

For Alamance County, the stakes sharpened after Southern Alamance and Southeast Alamance were eliminated in the other spring playoffs. Southern Alamance’s baseball run ended in the deciding Game 3 of the East Region finals, where Southern Lee won 13-3 in Sanford. That capped a series in which Southern Alamance had briefly jolted the bracket by snapping Southern Lee’s 19-game winning streak in Game 2, but it was not enough to extend the Patriots’ season any further.

Southeast Alamance’s best softball season in program history also came to a close in the East Regional finals. West Carteret completed the sweep by winning Game 2, 7-1, in Morehead City after shutting out the Stallions, 5-0, in Game 1 in Haw River. In that opener, Southeast was held to one hit, a blunt reminder of how dominant West Carteret’s pitching had been across the series.

That left Western Alamance carrying the county’s postseason hopes alone. The Warriors also carried championship experience into the matchup, after winning their first girls soccer state title in 2025 with a 1-0 victory over South Point in the Class 3-A final. Now, under the 2026 bracket, they were chasing another title in a tougher path, with the North Carolina High School Athletic Association setting the women’s soccer regional final for May 26 and the state championship rounds for May 28-30.

Western and Dixon had already built a postseason history, meeting in the 2023 and 2025 state playoffs and splitting 1-0 decisions, with Western winning the most recent meeting. That history, combined with two defenses that had not cracked in the tournament, made the East final a direct test of who could finally break through and keep Alamance County’s spring run alive one more week.