It was a hard-fought battle, but the Redmond High girls’ soccer team fell to the Woodinville Falcons, 2-1, on Tuesday night at home in a key 4A Kingco matchup.
The Falcons proved to be a very fast and aggressive squad with excellent ball control as they won most of the one-on-one battles, which led to several scoring opportunities.
“They were very aggressive, pretty quick, a good team,” said Redmond coach Pat Scheibe. “Like all the Kingco teams, there’s never anybody that’s easy.”
If you go to the well enough times, you’ll eventually draw water, and that’s what happened for Woodinville, which had nine shots on goal in the first half. Woodinville was finally able to score against the stingy Mustang defense in the 25th minute, when senior Shea Samuelson scored off of a pass from senior Stine Schoening.
Redmond junior goalkeeper Jessica Larson was busy in the first half and had three first-half saves, helping the Mustangs stay competitive.
But early in the second half, the Falcons struck again. Schoening broke through the Mustang defense and booted in a goal off of a nice feed from junior teammate Brooke Thayer.
“There was a little bit of the spacing and marking (issue) on a couple of the goals, and those are some things we’ve been working on to close down,” Scheibe noted.
With their backs to the wall, the Mustangs didn’t quit.
In the 65th minute, senior forward Katie Woodman found an open Kristin Haymen, who launched a powerful kick into the left corner of the goal, just out of the reach of Woodinville goalkeeper Emma Engen. But the Mustangs were unable to score the equalizer before time expired.
“The effort in the last bit to get us the goal to come back was nice to see,” Scheibe said. “A lot of new players came out and performed really well… There was some good play today.”
Redmond, now sitting at 2-3-0 in league play and 4-4-0 overall is on the outside looking in as far as a league playoff berth is concerned, with upcoming matches against Skyline (5-0-0 in league play) and Eastlake (4-1) to finish out the year.
Redmond played on Thursday night at Inglemoor after the Reporter’s deadline, an important game since a win would allow the Mustangs to leapfrog the Vikings, also at 2-3-0, in the league standings.
For Scheibe’s club, his focus from here on out will be to get the girls on the same page for a full soccer game.
“What’s frustrating is that you see those moments when we really play well and everything’s connecting. As a coach I want to see that for the full 80 (minutes) as opposed to 40 minutes in a match,” Scheibe explained. “That’s all part of the learning process with high school kids and having so many different styles of play. It’s always a challenge, but it’s fun to see the growth.”
