Edmonds-Woodway enters 3A state soccer semifinals as big underdog

EDMONDS — One look at the semifinal teams of the 3A state high school boys soccer tournament finds a lot of familiar names:

— The Interlake Saints, defending state champions and participants in six of the past eight state tournaments.

— The Lakeside Lions, champions in 2014 who have missed out on state only once in the past 20 years.

— The Mercer Island Islanders, who are participating in their sixth final four since 2006.

Then there are the Edmonds-Woodway Warriors. While the first three semifinalists are all teams one would expect to find in the final four, Edmonds-Woodway is the party crasher, and the Warriors are hoping this weekend they can shake up the state’s soccer hierarchy.

“It’s been amazing,” junior central defender Cameron Cohn said of the team’s unexpected run to the semifinals. “We did not expect to get this far, but once we started winning, we got on a really good streak during the playoffs, and our momentum has carried us here.”

Edmonds-Woodway, which faces Mercer Island in the semifinals at 4 p.m. Friday at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup, is unquestionably the outsider at this year’s 3A final four. This is just the fourth time in school history the Warriors have reached the state tournament. Each of the previous three times — 2002, 2003, 2015 — Edmonds-Woodway was bounced in the first round.

It’s not that Edmonds-Woodway has never experienced soccer success at the state level. However, all that success has been on the girls side, where the Warriors claimed the 3A state title in 2014 and took third in state last fall.

Now the boys are determined to match the girls. The Warriors already made school history just getting to the semifinals. Therefore Edmonds-Woodway, despite a 17-2-2 record, will be the big underdog this weekend.

But Edmonds-Woodway is making a habit of upsetting the apple cart.

First, the Warriors upended the Wesco hierarchy, upsetting traditional power Glacier Peak to claim the District 1 title.

Since then Edmonds-Woodway has run rampant over last year’s 3A final four. The Warriors knocked off Auburn Riverside, which finished fourth at last year’s tournament, 2-1 in the first round. Then Edmonds-Woodway routed Garfield, last year’s runner-up, 4-0 in the quarterfinals.

Throw in the experienced gained at state last year, and the Warriors feel confident heading into the final four, despite their lack of pedigree.

“The overall goal at the beginning of the year was to get out of the first round,” Edmonds-Woodway coach Tony Gilman said. “So we’ve done that, and we immediately sat down afterwards and said, ‘OK are you done, or do you want to reset your goals?’ I think at that point they started believing what we were telling them all season, that they can be really good. The last 31/2 games they’ve actually been very good. They’ve been behind, they’ve been ahead, they’ve done whatever’s necessary. It’s been rewarding in that respect.”

The turning point for the Warriors was the calendar flipping to May. Edmonds-Woodway went through the doldrums in April, as a combination of player absences because of injuries and grades, as well as complacency, saw the Warriors post a 4-2-2 record in the month. That included a 1-1 tie against Oak Harbor, a team that finished the season with just four wins, as well as a 2-0 loss to Glacier Peak that all but handed the Wesco 3A South title to the Grizzlies.

“Over the last few weeks most of the kids here have just wanted it more,” said senior forward Ethan Hopkins, who singled out a players-only meeting following the Oak Harbor game as a key moment leading to the team’s march to the final four. “The dedication has shown up every day because at the very beginning we’d have half the kids show up for practice. Over the last few weeks people actually realized we can make something of this season and go farther than we ever did before.”

Since then Edmonds-Woodway has been lights out. The Warriors, buoyed by the return of senior winger Jose Aleman-Cruz from injury, have won seven straight in May, outscoring their opponents 17-3. With Aleman-Cruz (nine goals) healthy again and Hopkins (11 goals) switched from midfield to forward to play alongside sophomore Armon Tenaw (15 goals), Edmonds-Woodway now has a dangerous three-pronged attack.

However, it’s been a full team effort over the current seven-game winning streak, with nine different players contributing goals during the stretch.

“We got hot at the right time and we’re playing our best soccer right now,” Cohn said. “If we keep playing like we are, who knows how far we can go.”

And for Edmonds-Woodway, that would mean letting the traditional powers know the Warriors mean business in boys soccer, too.