Philomath 7, Sweet Home 0
The Sweet Home girls soccer team lost 7-0 at Philomath Monday afternoon.
“They’re very good,” Coach Ramiro Santana said. Philomath passes and shoots well, “an excellent team to play. It was a good learning experience for us.”
Philomath is a physical team, with girls who use their heads, he said.
Philomath used its speed to overplay and confuse the Huskies in the first half, he said, but overall “we did OK.”
The Huskies put together a better second half after giving up five goals in the first, Santana said. They passed better and had better control, playing closer to Philomath’s level.
The team really needs to put two halves together, Santana said.
This was the last game of the season, Santana said, and this season, his team got a chance to bond and play against teams that taught them something.
During the season, the team got much better, he said. Other coaches have been telling Santana the team is better.
“They say they were more fun to play,” Santana said. “They play much better. They play as a team.”
Next year, “we will be more competitive,” Santana said. The girls have been playing teams with many seniors, while most of the Huskies are freshmen and sophomores this year. Next year, he has only three seniors.
Santana plans to work with the team through the summer, capitalizing on what they’ve learned this season, he said. With that, they will “accomplish something next year.”
Gervais 3, Sweet Home 2
The Sweet Home girls lost 3-2 to Gervais Thursday, Oct. 18, a game that the Huskies agreed they should have won, Santana said.
A penalty kick was the deciding score in the match, called when a Gervais player stepped on the ball as she was dribbling, Santana said.
“I tried to argue the point but the ref didn’t see it that way,” he said.
Brianna Wirth put the Huskies up 1-0 in the first half after dribbling through the defense and shooting from in front of the goal.
That score stood up until the second half, when Gervais got on the scoreboard.
Larissa Bjornsen scored Sweet Home’s other goal on a corner kick that, due to the stiff wind, curved into the net.
“That was a pretty neat goal,” Santana said.
But the real hero of the game, he said, was sophomore Alex Hawk, who was pressed into service as goalkeeper.
Hawk was outstanding, the coach said.
“She stopped some amazing shots,” he said. “She stopped six or seven shots that I thought really should have been goals. We would have lost so bad if she hadn’t been there.”