Mount Si soccer knocks off Sammamish
October 8, 2008
By Ryan Piersol
Monday’s soccer game with Sammamish was so physical, at one point Mount Si head coach Darren Brown had to hold two fingers in front of Jordyn Wilson’s face to see if she had her senses.
Maybe he should’ve picked another number, because there was no way Wilson was going to forget the number two — not after she put it on the scoreboard.
Wilson’s goal with _ left proved to be the game-winner in a 2-1 win against Sammamish at Mount Si Stadium that showed the Wildcats not only can win in a rough-and-tumble way, but plan to be in the KingCo 3A/2A race for the long haul.
“Sammamish and us were kind of jockeying for position in the league, so with this, the league is wide open,” said Brown, whose team improved to 3-2-1 in the league and 4-3-3 overall. “We showed the league a lot of what we can do tonight.”
The game promised to be a great matchup between a pair of offensive weapons in the Wildcats Nikki Stanton and Sammamish’s Anna Geldnhuys. The pair came in with a combined eight goals and 22 points on the season.
Still, both team’s defenders and midfielders were determined not to let the big scorers get going, and used rough play to get their message across. Shortly after scoring the go-ahead goal in the second half, Wilson took a blow to the face and had to spend a few minutes on the sidelines.
“I like physical games. Soccer is one of those sports where you can be physical,” she said. “It’s great when you play with a lot of heart and play all-out.
“We wanted this one really bad and we played as a team. I looked out there and saw girls playing hard and it made me want to too.”
Stanton and Geldenhuys had their say. Stanton put the Wildcats on the board first with a goal in the 12th minute off an assist by Taylor Robbins. Three minutes later, Geldenhuys answered for Sammamish with an unassisted goal to tie it up.
It was still 1-1 when, in the 54th minute, Mount Si put together a fast break. Stephanie Burk fed Wilson with a great pass on the outside and, uncovered, Wilson drilled the ball into the net for the go-ahead score.
Wilson said, when she got the ball on the outside with no defenders in front of her, she knew she had to score.
“I’ve been really wanting to score. I used to play sweeper, so since I moved up to center midfielder, I’ve been thinking about scoring,” she said. “It was a perfect ball that was played to my feet. It was a perfect chance to score, so I knew I had to.”
The win followed a Saturday loss to Juanita in which the Wildcats were shutout, 1-0. Juanita scored the game’s lone goal in the 36th minute.
Last week, the Wildcats also posted a crucial 3-2 win against Bellevue that really shook up the league standings. Stephanie Burk had two goals for Mount Si in the victory — one in the 37th minute and another in the 77th minute — while Hailey Conway scored in the first eight minutes of the contest off a Nikki Stanton assist.
Brown said Monday’s victory against Sammamish was his team nearly at its best.
“We came out on fire and played as a unit,” he said. “We played together and we played tight.
“We can’t rely on Nikki to do everything for us. She’s a great player, but we have to have other players contribute. And we had lots of them tonight.”
Reach editor Ryan Piersol at editor@snovalleystar.com.
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