The Kaiser girls soccer team kept turning the other cheek, knowing that if it did it would get the last laugh.

Jaylin Swartz scored on a header in the 13th minute and Courtney Okazaki added a nifty goal in the 70th minute and the Cougars beat Moanalua 2-0 at Kaiser in the final regular-season game for both teams. The Cougars earned the East’s top seed in next week’s OIA tournament, while Moanalua drops to the second seed. Anything other than a win by Kaiser (9-0-1) would have given Na Menehune (9-1) the top seed.

Moanalua, which had given up just two goals all year, responded to being down by trying to impose its will on the smaller Cougars and played the final eight minutes a man down because of it when Hoku Afong was given a red card and sent off. Storm Kenui and Haley Graham were also given yellow cards for Moanalua.

"I think the frustration level came in," Kaiser coach Adolph Samuels said. "We packed the middle and I know that was frustrating (Kenui) because she couldn’t get the ball a lot, but the other girls who were handling the ball a lot, we had too many people on them too, so they started getting frustrated and pushing in the back a little bit."

"I think they got frustrated as the game went on because we were staying composed and I think that made them more mad," Swartz said.

The Cougars caught Na Menehune flat-footed in the 13th minute when Moanalua tried to clear a floater of a pass from Noelle Mercado, but Swartz beat keeper Anu Kahele-Manners with a header into the right side of the goal. It was her sixth goal of the season.

Moanalua tried to respond with the wind at its back, but Kaiser’s defense held. Na Menehune had three shots, and six attempts, but each of them caught the brisk wind and went high over the goal.

Okazaki sealed it when she turned the corner with a slick juke move and beat Kahele-Manners across the goal mouth for her 10th goal of the season.

"The way Courtney made that unbelievable move, that was big time," Samuels said. "To beat Moanalua 2-0, against the best keeper in the state, that doesn’t happen."

Both teams get byes in the first round of the OIA playoffs, but Kaiser gets to avoid Mililani until the final if it gets that far. But don’t count Moanalua out. Na Menehune won the OIA championship as the East’s second seed — behind Kaiser — last year. Moanalua just has to shake this one off and get back to being the team it has been all season.

"It was not our naturalistic style of play," Moanalua coach Nikki Dela Pena said. "It was an emotional game. We knew this coming in, Kaiser always makes us run for 80 minutes; unfortunately I do think our emotions got the better of us tonight.

"But this leaves us in a good place, we know what kind of corrections we have to make and with this loss we have to learn."