MILL CREEK — As the Archbishop Thomas Murphy girls soccer team heads into this week’s Northwest District 2A tournament, it is recovering from two difficult games and downtrodden morale.
Though the Wildcats defeated Sultan 2-0 Oct. 21, it wasn’t with their “A” game. Two days later Cedarcrest edged Archbishop Murphy 3-2 on a shot 30 seconds into overtime.
Now the Wildcats just need a little recovery time because as coach Pat Jack said, “They are tired. They just don’t have the fire they need.”
Archbishop Murphy faces Blaine at 1 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, Oct. 30) at Everett Memorial Stadium.
The Wildcats already had clinched the Cascade Conference’s No. 1 seed to district. The team’s playoff status wasn’t changed by the Cedarcrest loss, but it affected the team’s spirit. Jack said the team is spread thin.
Archbishop Murphy is a 1A school that this year moved up a classification and has had to play against two 3A schools in the conference — Cedarcrest and South Whidbey.
In their last home game of the season against Sultan, Michelle Linscott and Emma Nelson scored goals in the first half. Archbishop Murphy spent the rest of the first and all of the second half playing defense to secure the win.
Even though Archbishop Murphy beat Sultan and lost to Cedarcrest, Jack thought her team played better in the latter contest.
Senior captain Kat Taylor chalks up the Wildcats’ inadequacies in Sultan to lack of interest.
“We played a lot better against Cedercrest because we expected more out of them.”
Taylor noted that earlier in the season Cedarcrest beat Archbishop Murphy 1-0.
“We wanted revenge,” she said. “It was important for us to win Cedercrest. I think we really wanted to win, and we still played really well even though we lost in overtime. We were getting tired and the other team just stepped up a little.”
Co-captain Brenna Rice concluded that the Sultan game was frustrating because every team member wants to win.
“I don’t like having goals scored on me,” said the senior sweeper.
Rice speculated that the team was drained and therefore not as able to use their skills.
“As they say, you play how you practice, and we’ve been tired in both,” Rice said.
Jack explained that the team’s rigorous soccer schedule is beginning to take its toll. All but three of the varsity players play on select teams — which means they play soccer seven days a week.
“It is hard on their bodies. They need recovery time,” Jack said. “We don’t have a deep bunch. I have two subs who are of quality to play on the field and if I lose one then I’m down to one sub. That happened to us last year. We got to the finals and we had to play back-to-back games and we just didn’t have the depth. I guess we’ll have to wait till the school gets a little bigger before we have more depth.”
Jack attributed the loss to Cedercrest to the small size of the team and to injuries.
“I had two extras, one of who couldn’t run and no one was on the bench. Cedercrest has a much bigger bench to use,” Jack said. “There’s no question about it, we couldn’t hold them.”
In hopes of training up the team for next year, Jack used the Sultan game as an opportunity to play some of the younger team members. As a result everyone had playing time in a game that wouldn’t affect the postseason.
“It’s nice for the incoming freshmen and sophomores,” Jack said. “They need a chance to play in an actual game.”
Taylor agreed its positive for them to be out on the field.
“By getting more play time they’ll make the team better for next year,” said Taylor, one of five graduating seniors. “Right now they are learning to play at a higher level.”
As the team moves into the district tournament, the Wildcats haven’t taken their sights off of going to state.
“I think that we’ll do really well,” Taylor said. “I hope that we can go to state for our senior year.”
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