Varsity - BHS vs Seattle Prep 9-16-25

​Bellevue 1-1 Seattle Prep
 
59th min 1-0 Saleen (Paris)
65th min 1-1 Prep goal
 
In the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the rogue heroes are bruised, bloody, exhausted, and unbeknownst to them, cornered by an army of armed lawmen waiting for them to emerge from their shelter. But Butch and Sundance, ignoring their aches, pains, and bullet-hole injuries, muster the courage to charge into the open to fight their way out of trouble...it takes courage and collective mental toughness to feel physically terrible, and still stand up and charge the opposition. During our warm-up before our game versus defending 3A State Champs Seattle Prep, there were moments I thought The Chase would be A Bridge Too Far.  As a team, The Way We Were, was sick. Ill. sniffling. red-eyed. It wasn't unexpected, every year by week two or three of a season the wave of illness descends like A River Runs Through It, as every virus, bug, and infection gets shared around the high school as students return from summer and are Up Close and Personal with each other. But this year has been extreme. During practice before the Prep game on Monday we had ten players, and I soon discovered that most of the ten healthy players were like Roy Hobbs in The Natural, putting on a brave face when actually in a great deal of pain (and sniffles). This isn't an excuse, because every high school program goes through this "sickness season" every year, but it doesn't take a Legal Eagle to understand that we weren't going to be at full strength against the visiting Panthers. I approached my pre-game words like a Horse Whisperer, trying to find the right tone with a team that clearly didn't feel like Ordinary People. We were struggling. I emphasized that "adreneline" is amazing, and all we could do, is do our best to ignore our symptoms, and like the Great Gatsby, fake it until you make it...Convince yourself that you're ready and able, even if it's just for the next 80 minutes. A projection of strength is sometimes enough, we would play like Lions even if we felt like Lambs. And so we did. We laced up our Sneakers, and took the field like The Great Waldo Pepper: brave, debonaire, and committed.      
 
(RIP Robert Redford [ask your parents]). 
 
The actual game ebbed and flowed all night. Prep would enjoy a period of possession and create a few chances, then our team would wrest control of the tempo and have our own extended moments of good play and narrow misses on goal. It was 0-0 at halftime, but both teams had come close to opening the scoring. We finally broke through in the 59th minute, as Tara won the ball at midfield, poked the ball to Ava who sent a looping switch towards Paris on the right wing. Paris took a remarkable first touch that spun her defender before laying off a simple square ball to Saleen who calmly passed the ball past a motionless keeper. 1-0 Bellevue and well deserved. But unfortunately, the lead didn't last long as in the 65th minute, Prep equalized with a quality goal. Their dangerous #13 picked up our attempted clearance 25 yards from goal, ran laterally with the ball at the top of our box before creating a half-yard of space that was enough to blast a left-footed rocket into the upper left corner of the net. Tied at 1-1. And that's how it would finish. Although we would twice rattle the woodwork (Raina smashing the right post with a volley from a corner kick, and Aanya firing an extraordinary left-footed howitzer that smashed the crossbar), Prep also had a few solid chances as Katelyn had to make a full-stretch finger-tip diving save to preserve the points late in the contest.  
 
Without exaggeration, Prep and Bellevue have fielded the most consistently competitive 3A teams over the last ten years. Both teams have won multiple State Championships during that time, often meeting in later rounds to spoil the party for the other team. All but two games between the two varsity programs have ended in ties in regulation (of course, one win for each), with playoff shootouts often being the only separator (again, one win apiece) and a very similar 0-0 non-conference draw last season. Ties always feel a bit "meh," and we should never ever go into a game trying to share points, but the end-result was probably a representative one (even though the defender's hand to the face of Saleen in the box after our first goal is often given as a PK and would've changed the contest to a likely 2-0 advantage...but it was not intentional so it's a judgement call by the referee...and our center was mostly excellent all night..so we accept it and move on).  
 
The statistics support the action: Bellevue's 19 shots/ 6 corners to 14 shots/ 1 corners for Prep. We completed 191 passes to Prep's 155, and our pass success rate was 68% to 62%. Not a dead heat, but not lopsided by any means.
 
Beyond the result and the statistics, I couldn't be more proud of how we battled last night when I knew how we collectively felt. So many players came into a very tight competitive game and gave us great minutes when we really needed it.  Our "12s" have a very difficult assignment, they all want to play more minutes (I get it, they should all want more minutes...but it is a "zero sum" problem and my responsibility to allocate), but need to be prepared for the role the team needs, which is more opportunistic and without a lot of notice. And every player who stepped on the field last night did their job, even if in only limited minutes. Well done.    
 
And with that, our non-conference schedule is complete. The remainder of our regular season schedule will be against Kingco opponents. I'll save the analysis on what that means for a later update, but for now, all we need to know is that we face a very good Mt. Si program on Thursday at their home field. 
 
Thank you for the support from the stands, and incidentally, I love the energy of our pre-game announcing. Thank you. 
 
Peter 
 
ps. The Sting is probably my favorite Redford movie, and I didn't even quote it above...you're welcome. 🙂