10/12/2024 Varsity - Bellevue vs North Creek 10-10-24Bellevue 4-1 North Creek
12th min Saleen (Nora) 15th min Mia (Saleen) 32nd min North Creek goal 62nd min Saleen (unassisted) 70th min Saleen (Mia) In almost every way, our game against North Creek was our best performance of the season. We dominated possession, created over 30 shots, and played fantastic defense. But in an important lesson about the fragility of awesome, we were one Sofia point-blank save away from the game being tied in the 55th minute at 2-2. But after the big Sofia save, we added two more goals, and the 4-1 final scoreline probably flattered the visitors. We were that good. Final stats: 31 shots/4 corners for Bellevue, 4 shots / 1 corner for North Creek. We opened the scoring in the 12th minute, as Nora slipped a simple entry pass to Saleen at striker, and our sophomore practitioner of wizard-filth dribbling, turned her defender, hypnotized her into dangling a leg on a phantom tackle, and harry-pottered the ball into the upper right corner. Magical goal. 1-0 Bellevue. Three minutes later we doubled the lead. Again, Saleen sawed her defender in half and blasted a shot that the Jaguar keeper could only parry to the side where Mia was waiting to knock in the rebound. And we were flying. It seemed just a matter of time before we added more goals, but then the humility of soccer brought us back to ground-level. With their first foray into our defensive third in the 32nd minute, North Creek's dangerous #11 got the ball, beat our defense with pace, and took a shot that seemed destined for the far corner. Becca made a strong save to her right, but the rebound fell kindly for the trailing striker who deflected the ball into the lower corner. 2-1 and suddenly the Jaguars had some belief. My halftime talk was about feelings (mostly frustration and irrational anger at allowing a late goal) and emotionless analysis (we were objectively awesome for 98% of the first half). Analysis won the day and after a few adjustments, we continued our excellent play in the 2nd half. in the 62nd minute, we got the goal that seemed destined to be, as Saleen intercepted a loose back pass and broke 1v1 on the North Creek keeper. No contest. 3-1 Bellevue. Eight minutes later Saleen completed her first Bellevue hat-trick. Lola anticipated a North Creek pass, intercepted the ball, slipped an easy pass to Mia's feet just outside the box, and Mia slipped an equally tricky through-ball that released Saleen alone against the keeper. We know how that ends. 4-1 Bellevue. Final score. At the beginning of the week, we needed help from others to be in a position to qualify for the Kingco 3A championship game (play-in game to the State tournament). The top two 3A teams in our league qualify for the championship game and 3A Liberty and Ingelmoor were both 6 points ahead of us in the standings on Monday. We were a distant third. By Friday, Ingelmoor's lead shrunk to 3 points, and Liberty's lead is now a single point. (3pts for a win, 1 pt for a tie). So yes, we are still 3rd, but guess who we get to play next week: Inglemoor and Liberty. Our destiny is in our control. With two wins next week we will leapfrog our two 3A rivals and be in pole position going into the final week of the season. It won't be easy. Inglemoor is the #3 RPI ranked team in the state, and Liberty is #4. Bellevue is #6. We go into next week as underdogs. Very very hungry underdogs. Bring on the Vikings on Tuesday at home and bring on the Patriots at their stadium on Thursday. It's going to be an important week in our season. Passion, focus, and wizard filth will be required. Comments are closed.
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