Junior Varsity - Bellevue vs Bainbridge 9-23-2023

Bellevue 2-1 Bainbridge

52nd min Morgan
68th min Bainbridge from corner kick
78th min Anna (Calla)

8-0, 8-0, 5-0, 3-0, 8-0, 10-0, 8-0.

Those are the scores of the 7 games the Bainbridge Island High School girls JV soccer team have played this season headed into our Saturday clash.

Wow. Impressive goal scoring. No matter the competition. So we knew we were going to have a tough battle against the Spartans.

It was an unusual game for us and speaking with Coach Peter, we couldn’t quite put our finger on it. The team was sluggish, apathic and a little disinterested. It was a bit baffling. Did I not get invited to the big Friday night party? Aside from a couple of girls, overall the team looked tired. We were not our normal selves, challenging every ball, tackling hard and pressing with effort.

This led to balls bouncing off our feet when a simple trap and pass would have worked. We had trouble connecting passes in crucial spots and we didn’t really threaten the Spartan’s goal in the first half.  

We talked at halftime about putting out a little more effort and being patient in our attack. Our defense was handling the one-dimensional Bainbridge attack: kick and run. So we felt good about shutting them down, we just needed to ramp up our attack.

Unfortunately, it was more of the same in the second half but Morgan came to our rescue in the 52nd minute and slipped a bouncing shot off the wet turf and under the diving goalkeeper. Whew. The goal relieved some the pressure and we started to connect a few more passes as we tried to get to the finish line.

As stated, Bainbridge was a well-coached, organized team so it was no surprise a well-executed short corner kick resulted in a rocket shot that Sophia had no chance to stop with tons of traffic (maybe a push?) in front of her. And just like that we found ourselves tied with just about 10 minutes to go in a game we felt we should be winning. I asked the girls to dig deep for the final minutes to go and find a game winner.

Enter Calla. With just minutes to go in the game, she took a throw-in from Mac, flicked it up and over her head – backwards – over the goalkeeper were Anna was waiting to head it in the net. Boom! Game over. Boy, do I love header goals and a game-winner too.

A win is a win. Not our best effort but it was a Saturday after all. Hopefully we won’t have those same issues next Saturday when we travel to Mercer Island for our next game. We’ll take Monday and Tuesday off to give the girls a rest before we get back into action next weekend. Have a great week.