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ESTERO — As the Estero position players run laps before practice each day, assistant coach Chris Sneddon puts the team’s goalkeepers through a series of drills, including one in which they leap trash cans to work on mid-flight coordination.

Must be working.

Estero keeper Mark Rhoades, a senior who struggled down the stretch in the regular season, made the save of his career in Thursday night’s Class 4A regional quarterfinals, a diving stab to preserve a 1-0 lead with about two minutes left in the first half.

The save did more than prevent Lely from forging a tie. It also swung the momentum to Estero, which then cruised to a 4-1 victory at Wildcat Stadium.

“He needs to be taken note,” Lely coach Rob Schank said of Rhoades, as he shook hands with Estero coach John Robinson after the game. “That’s what saved the game.”

It didn’t hurt, of course, that Estero had the wind at its back in the final 40 minutes, allowing the Wildcats to dominate the battle for field position.

But Rhoades, with the save, had to have provided an emotional boost. Not only did he turn away Lely senior Habentz Atilus’ bullet header from the right wing, he did it with a bruised knee that limited the keeper’s mobility.

Only a few minutes earlier, Atilus and Rhoades collided in front of the net. Each hit the ground, but Rhoades clearly got the worse end.

“I just forgot about it,” said Rhoades, who finished with six saves. “The only time it was tough is when I punted.”

Rhoades didn’t have to do much of that in the second half. With the wind playing a role, the Wildcats stormed through Lely in the second half.

Not in the first, though. Despite getting off several good shots, Estero’s only score came on a penalty kick by Juan Romero.

But the Wildcats (17-2-1) were on the mark after intermission. They scored twice in the first 14 minutes, including a long-range connection by Marco Brenes from the right corner.

Ah, Marco Brenes. Lely (6-11-4) knows the senior well, seeing as how they faced him twice last year. Brenes played in District 12 as a junior, the star of the Palmetto Ridge team, before transferring to Estero this year.

Lely’s only score? It came on a header by Jasen Vergo with less than 30 seconds to play, as he vaulted a shot over junior varsity keeper Jarrett Brown, who entered in place of his wounded teammate with about 15 minutes left.

“He tracked it good,” Sneddon, a former Estero keeper, said of Brown. “It just went over his head.”

Only Sneddon, a perfectionist, would complain about such things. The Wildcats, who host Tampa Jesuit next week, were winners in a regional match, something that couldn’t be said since Estero beat Mariner, 4-1, back in the 2002 playoffs.

Well, OK. The Wildcats were actually credited with a win in last year’s regional quarterfinals, but that’s only because Immokalee, which scored a 4-0 victory on the field, later was forced to forfeit because it used overage players.

Estero won’t need such particulars to explain Thursday night’s triumph. Just a final score, and how it got that way.

“We came out flat in the second half,” Schank said. “I think it would have been a different game without that phenomenal save.”