Sweet Home girls soccer lost a pair of games last week, falling to Cascade 5-1 and Sisters 2-1.
“We didn’t have a very good shooting day,” said Head Coach Ramiro Santana of the match at Cascade.
But he said his team moved the ball well, and had twice as many shots as Cascade.
“We just couldn’t get the ball in,” he said. “It was just one of those days.”
He said his defense played well, and his team had open opportunities. But a lot of the girls’ shots were right at the body of Cascade’s keeper.
Sweet Home was down 3-0 at halftime. Cascade scored two more goals in the second half, and Sweet Home got on the board with their only goal of the game 25 minutes into the second half, when Brookelynn Burke scored off of an assist from Natalie Rodgers.
“The second half, we played better than the first half,” Santana said.
Santana also said that the field at Cascade High School made a difference.
“We’ve been practicing and playing on turf. On grass it looked like we were a little heavy. The girls got kind of tired,” he said.
Santana said that the field was wet and the ball didn’t run as fast as it does on turf.
“Our passes were a little short and our kicks were not as good as usual,” he said.
Against Sisters, Santana said his team played “amazingly well” despite the losing effort.
“We challenged Sisters very well and matched well,” he said. “It was just back and forth, back and forth.”
Sweet Home scored 35 minutes into the game, when Esther Ramsey put the ball into the back of the net off of a corner kick served in by Natalie Rodgers.
The Huskies took their 1-0 lead into halftime.
Sisters then scored 24 minutes into the second half to tie the game at 1-1.
There was 14 seconds left in the game when Sisters goalie got possession of the ball, she kicked the ball up to the midfield, and the ball was played to one of Sister’s forwards, who scored in the final seconds to give Sister’s the 2-1 victory.
Defender Meagan Baham was sidelined in the second half after pulling a muscle in her upper leg. Midfielder Chloe Fairchild twisted her ankle and will be out for the remainder of the season.
In this week’s action, Sweet Home lost to Taft at home 3-1.
Three starters had to sit out the match due to injury.
“We had a few players hurt. That took us down quite a bit,” said Santana.
“We played good, but our passes were not there,” he said. “And there were times when instead of taking a shot, we decided to pass the ball.”
But he said, “We played the best that we could with the players we had.”
Taft scored all three of their goals in the first half. Sweet Home scored their lone goal 35 minutes into the second half when Taft was called for a hand ball in the box after a corner kick sent in by Rodgers led to a penalty kick, which was also executed by Rodgers.
The girls’ last regular season game will be on Thursday, April 1 at Husky Field at 6:00 p.m. It will be senior night.
“Stayton is probably one of the best teams in the league, so it’s going to be rough,” Santana said. “The one thing we’re not going to be able to match is the speed they have. They’re pretty fast.”