Varsity - BHS vs Mount Si 9-18-25

Bellevue 1-1 2OT Mt. Si
​
42nd min 0-1 Mt. Si goal
79th min 1-1 Saleen PK
 
No movie title pun runs this recap. I promise. but...
 
"It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then"  --Alice in Wonderland
 
A year ago, we made the trip to Mt. Si to play the league-leading Wildcats, and despite outplaying them for most of the game, returned home with a humbling 0-3 defeat. But, paraphrasing Lewis Carroll, we were a different person then. And despite fielding a very different team from a year ago, we experienced eerily similar conditions, as the Mt. Si stadium, already one of the firmest and bouncy surfaces in the league due to being built on stilts to protect against periodic flooding, got progressively slicker as the evening dew made trapping and possession more challenging. It's like a bridge in winter, the first surface to get slippery as the temperatures plummet. It got curiouser and curiouser as the evening got chillier and the turf got slicker and more difficult to play on. Mt. Si's tactics take advantage of their unique home field conditions: they are direct, good-in-the-air, fast, and physical, daring opponents to build out of the back, and willing to chase and run after every entry pass hit into the defensive third. And because their field conditions are condusive for an error-prone fast-break by either team, they position their last defender 15 yards behind the play like a Seahawks free safety in prevent defense, or an old-school Franz Beckenbauer "sweeper" from the 1974 World Cup. So the game was a mad hatter scramble for 80 minutes, and it felt like whichever team converted a set piece or managed a toe poke in a dangerous area would likely get a result. Unless...you play absolutely committed, organized, and disciplined defense. Which we did. I'm proud of the team for the effort displayed. It was scoreless at halftime after a tightly contested 40 minutes in which both teams had plenty of chances to open the scoring, and both goalkeepers had to make good saves. We were playing solid, if not sparkling soccer, but I was optimistic that our possession advantage in midfield would eventually tip the scales in our favor. Therefore, the Mt. Si goal in the 42nd minute was unfortunate, a bit of a surprise, and a direct result of the slippery conditions described above. So suddenly we had to chase the game.
 
We applied the necessary pressure and created a lot of scoring opportunities, but the Wildcats goalkeeper is the reigning Kingco goalkeer of the year from last season, and she made a series of remarkable saves to deny an equalizer. Finally, with less than a minute left in regulation we earned a corner and pushed everyone into the box in a desperate attempt to equalize...Saleen took the corner, it was headed back to her by a Mt. Si defender...and our Junior talisman drove into the box, juked past two defenders and was promptly hacked down before she got a shot away. Penalty. "How long is forever" asked Alice and the White Rabbit replied, "sometimes, just one second." The second between Saleen going down and the referee pointing to the spot and blowing his whistle felt like forever but was probably only a second. Saleen bravely stepped up, and deposited the ball into the back of the net against one of the best goalkeepers in our league. 1-1 Tie. 
 
Final whistle soon followed, but wait, not the "final" final whistle, because this was a Kingco League game and in our league, we play two 5 minute overtime periods if tied at the end of regulation. Do I like regular season overtime? Not really, I vote against it every year in our coaches meetings. IMO regular season ties should be ties, like in every soccer league in the world. And no team needs extra regular season minutes in the grind of high school soccer with two games in 48 hours. But this is Kingco High School soccer, so we play overtime. Just because. And five minutes is the opposite of forever contianed in the White Rabbit's single second, it's lightning quick. And...we had the best chance in overtime as Paris and Saleen executed a perfect give-and-go in the Wildcat box and Paris' shot narrowly missed going in at the near post. But it was not to be. 1-1 Final, final score. 
 
Given that we were 60 seconds from a frustrating 0-1 loss, we'll take the point and move on. 
 
We are now four weeks into our season, a third of our games have been played, and so I gave our team a day off. The sniffles were mostly gone last night, but not entireley. So three days of rest and recovery seemed prudent. 
 
Next week we travel to Skyline on Tuesday, before returning home to play one of just two remaining games against a 3A opponent (schools of a similar size to Bellevue), as we welcome Inglemoor to Bellevue Stadium on Thursday. I'll have more to write about why this is the case in our next recap...the reasons make no more sense than Alice falling into Wonderland.  
 
But as the Gryphon wisely pointed out to the Mock Turtle, "No no. The Adventures first!  Explanations take such a dreadful time."  
 
So onto more adventures on the soccer field next week, my explanations already take such a dreadful time.