Mead Blanks Kamiakin To Move To Semis

Mead High School soccer coach Dick Cullen and the Panther girls hope that history has a way of repeating itself.

Two years ago, the Panthers handed Kamiakin its only defeat of the season in the state playoff quarterfinals, then went on to win the Class AAA championship.

Saturday afternoon at Mead, in a WIAA/U.S. Bank quarterfinal match, the Panthers came out aggressively in the first half on their way to a 2-0 victory over the Braves.

Mead (19-0) moves on to next week’s semifinal match against Shorecrest at Shoreline Stadium in Seattle. Shorecrest beat Eastlake 3-1. Defending champion Bellarmine Prep and Columbia River make up the rest of the final four. Kamiakin ended its season with a 17-1-1 record, suffering only its third loss in the last three seasons, all in tournament play.

Kamiakin junior striker Meotis Erikson had scored in every game this season, but the Panthers shut her down Saturday, thanks especially to a strong defensive effort by Kellie Leaf, who in Cullen’s words “sacrificed herself offensively to help out on Erikson.”

Mead’s reputation this year has been as a terrific second-half team, but Saturday the Panthers got on the board twice in the first and played most of the first 20 minutes in the Kamiakin end. They put pressure on Kamiakin goalkeeper Carmel Lampson from the beginning, with half a dozen shots in the first 10 minutes.

Then, at the 17-minute mark, Mead’s Stacey Clinesmith stole the ball from Brave defender Erika Keatts and ripped a short-side shot that Lampson got her hands on but bumped it into the top of the net.

That seemed to wake up the Kamiakin offense, which nearly tied the game a minute later and then had its best scoring chance when Katie Privette’s dead-on shot was stopped by a diving Holly Vanwert.

After that, the Panthers contained Kamiakin and regrouped offensively, scoring the huge 2-0 goal when sophomore Stacey Drollinger headed Missy Strasburg’s corner kick past Lampson on the back side of the Kamiakin keeper.

The Panthers continued to play aggressively in the second half, Clinesmith narrowly missing her second goal off a great centering pass from Jen Dunford, and they kept Kamiakin from putting together much of an offensive threat.

“I’m not sure exactly why we came out so strong today,” Cullen said after the victory. “Maybe we were just a little more anxious to play - I just know we had a lot of early attacking pressure.”

For her part, Kamiakin coach Chris Erikson felt that the Braves played early the way they practiced on Friday, physically and mentally in a defensive mode.

“It was like we didn’t even try to move the ball up the field,” she said. “We worked a lot yesterday on containment, but until they scored we forgot to play offense, too.”