West Valley girls rebound, advance to Class 2A semifinal match after up-and-down season

There are moments in the course of a season where the road forks and a team can choose a direction – they can either make the decision to get better, or simply accept the road they’ve begun to travel.

For the West Valley girls soccer team, that moment came in Cheney minutes after the Eagles gave up two goals in the final minutes to lose a crucial Great Northern League match, 4-2.

Coach Shelli Totton-Peterson was disgusted as she followed her squad off the pitch. There was too much talent on this team, she knew, to play the way they had just played.

It would take some creativity to get the team together on the same page once and for all, and Totton-Peterson has never shied away from creativity.

That the Eagles head into this weekend as one of four Class 2A teams playing for the state championship reveals the choice the team made.

“You know, it’s kind of hard to really say for sure what made the difference,” she said. “I think the girls just made the decision. We did a few different things.We changed our formation a little. And we tried some motivational tactics.

“Mostly, I just told them that, if they wanted to continue their high school career, or even continue to be a team, they would have to make some changes. I told them they have the talent to beat most teams.”

And, she said, she dipped into her bag of motivational tricks to hammer her point home.

“I’m not afraid of doing something cheesy,” she laughed. “I got everyone a key on a chain, and I had them wear them around their neck. Kids would see them in the hall and ask them, ‘What are you wearing?’ ‘It’s my key to success,’ And we had a car – I got them all an actual Matchbox car that they were to carry around. That was to remind them to keep the drive alive. I gave them all a rock to remind them to be rock solid.”

Perhaps the most inspirational tactic was to pass around individual links from a chain. The point she said, was that by themselves the links really weren’t all that useful. Then she put them all together and suddenly, when they all pulled on it together, it gets the job done.

“The whole point was to get them all thinking about the task ahead,” she said.

Things didn’t change overnight. In fact, after the Cheney loss West Valley dropped two more league games, falling to East Valley and Pullman to end the regular season.

But the Eagles rallied in the district tournament, beating Cheney (3-0), Clarkston (4-3) and East Valley (5-4) to earn the No. 1 seed into the state tournament – the school’s 10th appearance in the state field of 16.

From there, they knocked off Lynden (4-1) and rallied from two goals down in the first half to beat Port Angeles, 4-3 in a shootout, to reach the state semifinals for the second time in school history.

West Valley faces Liberty at 6 p.m. Friday at Shoreline Stadium in North Seattle. Columbia River plays White River in the other semifinal. The winners play Saturday at 4.

The Eagles (10-9) head to the final four with a record that is easy to overlook, but the coach is looking at it as a positive. They will likely be overlooked and taken lightly, creating an opportunity.

West Valley is a team that travels well, the coach explained.

“They may complain about it, but I think they really do enjoy the bus ride,” she added “They’re back there singing and playing games together. I’m actually looking forward to the bus ride myself. They get to hang out together the night before and spend the day together before the game. I think that’s a good thing for us.”

There are lessons for the team in the way the last West Valley team to reach the state semifinals approached their game with Burlington-Edison.

“That team executed our game plan perfectly,” Totton-Peterson said. “We got to a shootout with them, and I think we really surprised some people. We lost in the shootout, but we accomplished what we set out to do.”

As one of the last teams standing on the final weekend of the girls soccer season, Totton-Peterson said she has a simple goal for her players, and its not about a final score.

“To me, it’s really all about enjoying the journey,” she said. “It all goes by so fast for the girls. What I want for them is to get to a place where they can celebrate and enjoy the moment. The one thing I want from them is to have nothing left at the end of the game. I tell them that I want them to be exhausted at the end of the game. If you leave it all out there, you’ve done all that I ask.”