SEDRO-WOOLLEY — On a day of great emotion, the Archbishop Murphy boys soccer team came up a little bit short in the Class 2A district championship game against Sedro-Woolley on Saturday night.
The Wildcats trailed 1-0 at halftime and 2-0 midway through the second half before finally getting on the scoreboard on a penalty kick by senior midfielder Gabe Astone. Archbishop Murphy continued to battle gamely to the end, including a late chance that banged off the crossbar, but the final result was a 2-1 loss.
The game was played a few hours after a memorial service for Kristi Bartz, an Archbishop Murphy student-athlete who died tragically last weekend. The Wildcat players attended the service and later a reception before gathering for the trip to Sedro-Woolley and an 8 p.m. kickoff.
This game, said Wildcats coach Mike Bartley, “wasn’t about the state playoffs or winning a district title. Today was for us. We were playing for our family, which is Murphy.”
The Wildcats, he went on, “were playing for Kristi, they were playing for the school itself and the (Archbishop Murphy) community. That’s the biggest thing that was important to them tonight.”
And even though the team came out on the short end, “we knocked the ball around fairly well,” Bartley said. “We had some opportunities early, and if we’d converted them I think it would’ve gone the normal way we play.
“Sedro-Woolley is a really good team and this is a really tough place to play — we lost last year here in the state playoffs — but we had a lot of confidence. And we actually we played fairly well tonight. We had some really good chances, but we just didn’t put them away.”
Sedro-Woolley struck first midway through the first half. Senior midfielder Jackson Price brought the ball in from the right side, eluded a defender on the back line with a nifty move, and sent a shot past Wildcats goalie Ryan Henderson into the back of the net.
The Cubs made it 2-0 midway through the second half when forward Blaine Hindman tapped the ball into the net from out of a cluster of players in front of the goal.
The Wildcats answered minutes later when Sedro Woolley goalie Dylan Witzel drew a pushing foul in the penalty box and Astone buried the penalty kick into the left side of the net.
But the tying goal would not come in the late minutes despite a gallant closing effort by the Wildcats. “If we’d finished a few more chances,” Bartley said, “we could’ve won.”
The game was a spirited and often physical tussle between two evenly matched teams. In the second half, the referee issued three yellow cards and one red card, with all the cards except one yellow given to Sedro Woolley. The red card was given to Price after a scuffle near the Sedro Woolley bench.
The Wildcats will wait to see who they play on Tuesday night in the opening round of the state playoffs, but Bartley likes his team’s chances. Archbishop Murphy will be playing at home on the school’s new artificial-turf field.
“I expect us to play at our highest level on Tuesday night,” Bartley said. “I think we’re good enough that we can go win the state title.”
At Sedro-Woolley H.S.
Goals—Jackson Price (S-W), Blaine Hindman (S-W), Gabe Astone (AM). Goalkeepers—Sedro-Woolley: Dylan Witzel. Archbishop Murphy: Ryan Henderson. Records—Sedro-Woolley 14-4-1. Archbishop Murphy 17-1-1.
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