Sweet Home girls lost two road Oregon West Conference soccer matchups last week, falling 5-0 at Cascade 5-0, and then 8-0 to Newport.
Cascade is third in the OWC, while Newport is the No. 1 team in the state for 4A. Sweet Home sits at fifth in the OWC, at 1-4-2 overall.
Against Cascade (3-3), Head Coach Ramiro Santana said “The score looks worse than how it actually was. We played alright; we just didn’t score. We had our opportunities.”
He noted that the Huskies took nine shots in the game, but they could have been aimed better.
“Instead of kicking the ball away from the goalie, we kicked it straight to her,” he said.
Cascade was able to attack with quickness. “They had a couple of forwards that were faster than we were,” Santana said. “They pretty much beat us by speed. Our defenders could not keep up with them.”
Cascade scored two goals in the first half and three in the second.
Newport was even better.
“I don’t know if anybody’s going to beat them this year,” Santana said. “They’ve got everything. They’re just really good. They’re good passers, they’re fast, they have good communication. They do pretty much everything right.”
Still, the coach said “We played well.” He noted that the Huskies took three or four shots in the game’s first nine minutes where “we should have scored.”
“We were faster than the defense, but we don’t know how to take advantage when we have the opportunities,” he explained. “We need to score when we have our opportunities. We can’t let them go to waste, especially when you play teams like Newport.”
Newport (6-0-1) scored four goals in the first half and four in the second. The game was called in the 25th minute of the second half due to the 8-goal differential mercy rule.
This week, Sweet Home plays at Philomath (3-3) at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 4, before hosting North Marion (4-1-1) at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 6.