Wildcats blank Knights 3-0

King’s falls 3-0

to Cascade Conference rivals

By David Pan

Enterprise sports editor

Ever since their opening 4-0 loss to Bellingham, the Archbishop Murphy boys soccer team has made it a point to start off its game with intensity.

That intensity has led to early goals and last week’s game against King’s was no exception.

Junior midfielder Matt Leen scored off an assist from Sean Ryan 11 minutes into the game to help lead the Wildcats to a 3-0 victory over the Knights in a Cascade Conference game April 9 at Archbishop Murphy High School.

The standout of the game actually was sophomore midfielder Alexis Magana, who scored a pair of unassisted goals midway through the second half to seal the victory.

“We’ve been fortunate enough this year to start real well,” said first-year coach Eddie Fernandez. “Every game we’ve been able to start quickly … the key to our success is the boys are fired up to play.

“We want to play the first five minutes as hard as the last five.”

The game also was Archbishop Murphy’s fourth shutout of the season. Junior goalkeeper Doug Ehlebracht has had a stellar season so far along with his defensive line of senior co-captain Sterling Hoza, freshman Aida Huggins, senior Jacob Clark and senior Gina Taskakos.

“Our defensive mentality comes from the whole team,” Fernandez said. “It’s a whole team effort.”

Though he didn’t use injuries as an excuse, King’s coach Ben Somoza noted that his team came into the game limping and then proceeded to lose two players to injuries during the game.

“It wasn’t our best game by all means,” he said. “We’re pretty beat up in terms of our roster.”

Junior Joseph Jeong and sophomore Ryan Gamache both have to leave the game with injuries.

“We had to make some adjustments in terms of patching up the lineup,” Somoza said.

It seemed to take a while for the Knights to get back in sync.

“I didn’t think in the first half we competed as well as we did in terms of our energy level,” Somoza said. “In the second half our energy level was a lot higher.”

Still, King’s had two significant breakdowns on defense.

“We gave up some really bad goals,” Somoza said. “Give them credit. They fight pretty hard. They got an early goal. We were not able to manufacture much offense.”

Three other Knights are out with injuries, which has forced Somoza to play some players in different positions. Still the juggling of the lineup hasn’t really hurt King’s too much.

With its 4-1 victory over Sultan on April 11, the Knights improved to 4-3 in the league and 6-3 overall.

“This group is pretty resilient in dealing with challenges,” Somoza said. “We’ve got players playing different positions. It’s good overall for the team, getting guys used to playing different positions.

“When we’ve had our full team I thought we were playing pretty good soccer. We were getting the results we wanted and the opportunities we wanted.”

The poor field conditions made evaluating Archbishop Murphy difficult for Somoza, though he did say that the Wildcats work extremely hard and are well organized.

Archbishop Murphy (6-0, 7-1) remained undefeated in the league.

“We’re excited about the possibilities,” Fernandez said. “We’ve won the first half of the season against some good teams. They’re going to be that much more motivated.”

Like the defense, the Wildcats’ offense is led by several players. Junior Erik Schmidt leads the team with five goals. Magana has four, while senior Ian Houts had two goals and two assists. Ryan had a team-high four assists.

“These players don’t score goals without the work of players around them,” Fernandez said. “Team chemistry and the team motivation to win has been a big part of our success.”