ARLINGTON — Back in September, the Edmonds-Woodway girls soccer team lost its first game of the season, a non-conference meeting with Mercer Island.
Since then the Warriors have gone 15-0-2, with the latest of those wins on Tuesday night. The 3-0 victory came against Stanwood in a semifinal contest of the Class 3A District 1 tournament at Arlington High School.
Senior forward Gabby Clark scored twice and Ashleigh Fonsen added the other goal, all in the first half, as the Warriors clinched a spot in the upcoming state tournament.
“We played a good first half,” said Edmonds-Woodway coach Bill LeCompte. “We didn’t follow up as well in the second half as we would want to, but we did well enough to punch a ticket to state.”
Edmonds-Woodway will either be the district’s No. 1 or No. 2 seed, depending on the outcome of Saturday’s district championship game against Arlington. That showdown will be at 7 p.m., again at Arlington High School.
A year ago the Warriors won the Class 3A state championship, but they have nine new players on this year’s district roster. It could have been a season with some growing pains, but instead Edmonds-Woodway has not lost in its last 17 games.
“We’ve definitely gotten better through the season,” LeCompte said. “And we’ve definitely cleaned up a lot of our mistakes. … The good thing is, a lot of kids have stepped up on the scoring front. I’ve got 11 or 12 different kids that have scored this season. We’re working together as a group and as a team.”
The Warriors have also been strong defensively this season, he went on. “Even when we’re not playing our best, we find a way to defend well. It’s a credit to the whole team, but our back line has just done a super job most of the season keeping goals from not going in.”
Going forward, Clark said, “I think we have a really good chance of making it back to the state championship. It’s a completely new team basically, but we have a lot of talent that came in and we just work really well together.”
Stanwood moves into a loser-out consolation game at 7 p.m. Thursday against the winner of Tuesday’s Ferndale-Shorewood game.
At Arlington H.S.
Goals—Gabby Clark (E-W) 2, Ashleigh Fonsen (E-W). Goalkeepers—Stanwood: Kaitlin Larson. Edmonds-Woodway: Hannah Hicks. Records—Stanwood 9-7-2 overall. Edmonds-Woodway 15-1-2.
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