Saturday evening’s game marked a wonderful celebration of soccer on the Olympic Peninsula with the amazing synergy of Peninsula College women, NPFC Rec Women, and HS girls from both PA and Sequim, all coming together to share in their love of soccer.
Peninsula College soccer players, Shawna Larsen, Ellie Barden and Evee Stoddard coached the “Wolf Riders,” who consisted of incoming freshmen up to seniors. Many of them had never played together before. The Wolf Riders had the wind at their backs the first half, and it appeared the game could go either way. Both teams had a slew of ballers and players who remained calm under pressure.
The Wolf Riders had a strong defensive line including Libby Turella, Haley Wagner, and Amara Gonzalez who made it difficult to break through. The midfielders had the speed and were quick to move the ball both up the sidelines and with many chances on the inside coming from Sasha Yada and Kalli Grove. Their coaches were cueing them to look for triangles. Wolf Rider’s Olive Bridge and Ruby Moxley-Horgan protected the middle very well, disrupted our plans, and then took advantage of their speed and quick decision-making to counterattack. Moxley-Horgan made a full-field run with the ball, taking a path to the outside and opting for a cross, but Blaze’s defense anticipated, and shut down the chance.
The intention for Blaze for the game was to work on our offensive shape and defensive shape and to quickly transition between the two. Blaze came up with a short corner conversion with a pass inside that was finished by Mel Messineo to bring the score to 1-0 at the end of the 1st half. Blaze took advantage of the 2nd downwind half to keep the ball in the opponent’s half of the field. With a change in shape adding an additional midfielder, Blaze found a groove with lots of passing options in the middle. Blaze put to use the skills and cohesion gained from 2 months of practice together and kept the ball moving in the midfield. Blaze’s Piper Williams played some beautiful long balls up the right sideline and seemed to enjoy watching Vianey Cadenas chase them down and cross them to the center. On a drop ball, Blaze’s Lisa Hansen played a through ball to Taryn Asmus who then placed a beautiful shot out of reach of keeper Lilli Anderson, to finish the game 2-0.
“The second half we were much sharper, and we controlled the game. We were able to create quality chances (our attack improved tremendously compared to our last match.) Both of our team functions were really good in that half. We were more settled and composed (maybe nervous in the first half?). We performed good teamwork.”
Coach Juan Carlos
A big thank you to the HS girls for coming out and giving us the opportunity to play. Thank you also to the PC women for coaching and players Risa Nishida and Rylie Echavaria serving as referee AR’s and to Steve Shively for centering. And lastly, thank you to the community for coming out to support both teams!