Youth Serves Rams State Title

For all the suspense they generated in their semifinal shootout win, the Riverside Rams created even a little more in their Class 2A girls soccer state championship game against Sultan Saturday night at Federal Way Memorial Field.

Larissa Mueller gave the Rams a two-goal lead early and Riverside was forced to hold off the hard-charging Turks. When the suspense of the end-to-end match finally ended, the Rams raised the state championship trophy with a 2-1 victory.

“I really don’t have any words right now,” Riverside’s first-year coach Kevin Moon said after an ice-water drenching courtesy of his players. “This other team came out hard. They could have come back and won this one. They truly deserved to be here.”

Not only did the Rams win the sixth state team title in school history, but they did it with a perfect 20-0 record - with just two seniors.

“This is amazing for my senior year we come here and win state,” said Lauri Faraschuk. “We earned it. We played some not-so-good teams and we kept our focus on our goal. Our goal was here and we met our goal.”

“It’s what we’ve been wanting and dreaming for since we were little,” said, Bernice Stime, the other senior. “It just all came together this year.”

Mueller, a sophomore forward, scored twice in the first 14 minutes, but the Turks came back with a goal early in the second half.

“We couldn’t get anything up the field yesterday. We were getting stuck in the middle,” Mueller said of the Rams’ 1-0 semifinal victory Friday over Othello, in which the Rams needed nine rounds of penalty kicks to dispatch the Huskies 9-8.

“Today we got our game together and we got more balls up where we could break away and shoot,” Mueller said.

The Rams capitalized on a defensive error by the Turks. Abi Ogle crossed the ball across the Turks’ goal mouth. Sultan keeper Amber Gugala came out, but a defender deflected the ball past her toward the goal. Mueller beat the defender to the ball and tapped it in for a 1-0 lead just 9:41 into the game.

Mueller scored again 6 minutes later. This time, Faraschuk sent Mueller a long ball straight up the middle. Mueller raced past the Sultan defense on a breakaway. Gugala came out and Mueller scored with a shot from 22 yards out.

The Turks finally got their offense going early in the second half and scored on their first shot of the game. Stacy Harrington beat keeper Carlee Schluter with a free kick from 20 yards out with 33:30 to play.

“In the second half, it was a different tone because we came out so flat in the beginning,” Sultan coach Andrea Fuller said of the Turks’ second-half surge. “We outplayed them in the second half, but they just have a great defense.”

Moments after her first free kick, Harrington nearly scored again on another free kick from 30 yards out.

, DataTimes