The girls soccer team broke into the victory column with a 5-1 win at home against Gervais last Monday.
Going in, it was a game that they felt they could win. And though they were excited, it wasn’t necessarily their best game according to some of the players.
“We could have played a little harder,” said goalie Rachel Gaskey, whom coach Eric Markell gave most of the credit for keeping them in the game in the first half. “We beat them last year so we came into the game thinking we were going to beat them pretty bad. But it was still pretty exciting and an energy boost.”
Sarah Winslow opened the scoring for Sweet Home, dribbling a long way before putting it away. Gervais followed with a penalty kick. Then senior defender Anne Helfrich shot a free kick from 25 yards out that sailed perfectly just over the goalie’s head.
Stefani Crocker, who scored two of the Husky goals and assisted on another, admitted to being a little scared after a sluggish first half gave them only a 2-1 lead.
“We didn’t have a lot of ball control and we bunched up a lot,” said Crocker. “Our coach told us what we had to do at halftime and we did it.”
Markell told them they needed to start shooting more because the shots attempted were about even in the first half.
“They wanted to get perfect,” said Markell. “Instead they would lose the ball.”
In the second half, the entire team contributed and the shots on goal were about two to one in favor of the Huskies with most of them near the goal. Winslow tipped in a shot by Crocker that was probably headed into the net anyway. Crocker finished the scoring with two breakaway goals of her own.
Then the Huskies went on the road to a private school in Salem, Blanchet. Blanchet’s speed was too much for Sweet Home as they blanked the Huskies, 9-0.
According to Winslow, to get to that level, it will take a lot of work.
“We need to work hard through the whole practice,” she said. “If we worked harder, we could could start to get better. Then we could perform more detailed drills.”
Crocker thinks playing tough teams like Blanchet can only help them.
“If play the harder teams, we play that much harder to beat them,” she said. “Most of the team wants to win and we want to make our soccer program better known.”
Markell hopes that even a win against Gervais will carry over into other games.
“Hopefully they know they can do it, instead of always being on the short end,” he said.
The Huskies played Western Mennonite on Tuesday and will try to be on long end at Stayton this Thursday.