Sluggish Gonzaga Prep Can’t Keep Pace With Mead
During the course of any season, teams are bound to be flat on occasion.
The mystery is when and the question is what the consequences will be.
For the Gonzaga Prep girls soccer team, the when was Wednesday afternoon against visiting Mead. The consequences were predictable.
The Panthers (3 regulation wins, 0 overtime wins, 0 overtime losses, 0 regulation losses), who haven’t lost a Greater Spokane League match in 3-1/2 years and have won the last nine league titles, made the Bullpups (2-0-0-1) pay, winning 2-0.
Mead had one those down days on Monday before escaping with a 2-1 win over Ferris.
“Monday we just didn’t play well against Ferris … so the expectations (against Prep) weren’t real high going in,” said Mead coach Dick Cullen. “We weren’t very intense against Ferris and I don’t know why. Ferris is a very good team and Prep’s a very good team. I’m just really pleased they came to play and played well as a team.”
Mead needed just 90 seconds to prove itself. Stacy Clinesmith, who led the league in scoring last year, received a perfect pass from Kelly Leaf at the circle at the top of the 18-yard box and rifled a shot past goalkeeper Angela Harrison into the top-left corner.
“Angela Harrison is a good goalkeeper,” Cullen said. “We knew that we had to get quality shots.”
Clinesmith, last year’s most valuable player, said the difference was playing against a team that took the Panthers to a shootout in last fall’s District 8-AAA title match.
“Today we came out knowing we had to beat them,” she said. “We came out with heart and desire and that was why we beat them.”
The Panthers couldn’t put away the Bullpups until Katrina Morton, alone in the box after a pass from Erin Moore, had plenty of time to beat Harrison by crossing the ball into the bottom left corner in the 75th minute.
“We were really flat; I don’t know what it was,” said Prep coach Christian Birrer. “We didn’t show our usual composure on the ball. I can’t explain it, sometimes it just happens.
“In the area in front of the penalty box we gave them a little too much space. On both goals they had all the time to pick where they wanted to shoot the ball.”
Also reflecting Prep’s ineffectiveness was Mead’s 12-4 edge in shots on goal and the one-save shutout posted by Holly Vanwert.
The Bullpups offense suffered when Dani Thorn, one of the top forwards in the league, injured her left knee shortly after Clinesmith’s goal. The seriousness of the injury will be determined Friday morning.
“Losing Dani throws our timing off,” Birrer said, “but it was more than that.”
At Hart Field, goalkeeper Janelle Wendel’s save on Central Valley’s fifth shot in a shootout preserved host Lewis and Clark’s win over the Bears (2-0-1-1).
Regulation ended tied at 1. Neither team scored during two overtimes, although a Karen Carpenter shot hit the crossbar - the fifth such occurrence on the day for CV. Jessica Fransen, Sarah Frazier, Megan McKenzie and Sarah Gibel scored as firstplace LC (3-1-0-0) won the shootout 4-3.
At the Complex, North Central and Shadle Park played a match that mirrored LC-CV. Regulation ended with a 1-all tie, nobody scored during overtimes and NC (0-2-0-2) won the shootout 4-3.
Meagen Michelbook of the Indians and Jen Baechler of Shadle (0-0-1-3) scored during regulation. The Highlanders had a 24-7 shots-on-goal edge, but often tried to score from too far out.
At Rogers, Sara Streufert scored three times to lead University (1-0-0-2) to a 9-0 win over the host Pirates (0-0-1-3). Pirates goalkeeper Angie Vulcano had 15 saves before hyperextending her knee in a collision with Streufert.
, DataTimes