Struggling with a growing roster of injured players, the Huskies defeated La Pine 2-0 at home in the final regular season girls soccer game Thursday after losing 4-0 at Sisters on Oct. 25.
“It was a good game,” Coach Ramiro Santana said about La Pine. “It was not an easy game, but it was not a hard game to overplay them.”
The main thing hurting the Huskies throughout the week was a long list of injured players. Jessika Stewart is out for the season. In questionable status are Rachel Jones, Alana Long, Rylee Links and Kristen Tolle. Sabrina Davis was hurt during the week too, but she will return for playoffs.
On the field, Hanna Currey and Meghan O’Donnell are hurt but playing.
“The day we played Junction City, Junction City beat us up, messed up my kids pretty bad,” Santana said.
That left the Huskies with just Currey as a sub, Santana said, but that didn’t hamper them too much against La Pine.
“We pretty much dominated them,” he said. “We did good passing.”
The Huskies weren’t too aggressive, he said, but they shot the ball 25 times compared to La Pine’s six.
The Huskies scored in the minute 21 on an assist from Jasmin Yoder to Katie Virtue. Yoder brought the ball up the middle and then sent it left to Virtue, who took the shot.
The Huskies led 1-0 at halftime.
The next goal was taken up the left by Virtue. She crossed it to the middle, Santana said. It looked like a corner kick with the teams clustered near the goal. Currey put it into the net in about the minute 15 of the second half.
Sisters dominated the first half of a late, cold under-the-lights game.
“The first half kind of hurt us,” Santana said. “We had a couple of little mistakes.
Sisters scored its first goal in the minute 21, shooting the ball into a corner of the goal, Santana said. Sisters scored three more times before the end of the half.
“In the second half, we outplayed them,” Santana said. Three times, the Huskies shot the ball into the goal post, and Sisters didn’t score.
“We had a couple of good chances,” Santana said, and Tolle had six or seven “amazing” stops after taking over the goal in the second half.
The cold weather was rough on the Huskies, Santana said. By the time the game started, it was freezing. By the end of the game, the temperature had dropped into the 20s.
The Huskies finished the regular season 5-5 in league and 6-6-1 overall. They finished fourth in league behind Cottage Grove, 6-4; Junction City, 7-3; and Sisters, 10-0.
The Huskies finished ahead of Elmira, 2-8, and La Pine, 0-10.
They will play Philomath, but the date and location have not been set yet. Updated information will be posted at sweethomenews.com when it becomes avaialble.