The lady Viking soccer team took their playing to a new level of intensity during their last game with Concrete, winning 8-1 against a team that rarely lets other teams near their goal.
On Thursday, Oct. 29 the Lady Vikings played their last and most intense league game and brought home the league championship. The Vikings, who end their season 8-2, lost only to the 1A ranked Friday Harbor. They will advance into post season play with a tri-district game on Nov. 7 at Edmonds Stadium against Seattle Lutheran for first place in tri-district competition. A win or a loss will advance the Lady Vikings to the first round of state on Nov. 14 (time and location information to come).
The Vikings did something many teams cannot do: they focused and maintained their level of play with the weather against them and the score in their favor.
“Our level of integrity was sustained throughout the game,” Coach Chama Anderson said. “We played beautifully throughout, no matter what the score was, and it was a complete downpour the entire time. This was awesome because when you start to stack up points, it’s easy to play at a diffferent level, but we kept up a high calibre of play. We won the mental game and that is huge.”
And Concrete did not play poorly. While the Orcas team has experience and finesse on their side, Concrete is a strong team and getting stronger.
“They had one player who was very fast,” Anderson said.
Taylor Lee, one of a handful of seniors at Concrete, scored a beautiful goal against the Vikings.
“It went straight in, from the left side of field and into the opposite corner. Concrete Coach Adam Woodworth has a great group of players on his side,” Anderson commented.
But the Lady Vikings poured on the intensity even as the field was flooding with rain. in the first ten minutes, Alison O’Toole put one in the goal for Orcas and then kept up her assault on the other team’s territory, scoring a whopping six goals for the Vikings in the middle of a deluge. But it was a group effort.
“We played really well as a team,” O’Toole said, one of six seniors on the Orcas soccer team. “We had a meeting before the game and we talked about maintaining our focus. We realized that in order to do well at state we have to mentally prepare ourselves. We were freezing, it was pouring, but we were all really good at keeping our composure on the field.”
What shut a strong team like Concrete down?
“We have an aggressive offense, and they just don’t take no for an answer,” Anderson commented.
Concrete did not have as much speed as Orcas, but what made the difference was Orcas’ hunger for the goal.
“O’Toole was on fire; she’s got that drive to go to the goal. She has that hunger,” Anderson said.
Stephanie Shaw put one in as well for Orcas off of a cross and Hannah North (usually a sweeper) played forward and also scored for the Vikings. Ashley Klein came up to play sweeper for North and gave the Vikings the strong back field they needed to keep Concrete from scoring.
“We switch back and forth between man-on and zone,” Anderson said. “The players have been playing soccer long enough to make the change-ups seamless. This is one of the things that makes us so powerful on the field. We have a fluid knowledge of the game.”
