Mead, U-Hi look to end G-Prep’s reign

It may seem Sarah Dean has a lot on her shoulders.

The top scorer on a Gonzaga Prep girls soccer team that has won two straight Greater Spokane League titles and took third place in the 2004 4A State tournament is one of the few returning members of a suddenly young Bullpups squad.

“What’s nice about having a player like Sarah,” Prep head coach Christian Birrer said, “is that she commands the attention of other teams’ defenses, and that keeps them occupied, which definitely frees up other players.”

Admitted new Mead coach Chris Allen, previously an assistant with Gonzaga Prep, “They lost a lot to graduation, but Dean is such an impact player. She’s one of the few players you have to send an instantaneous double team. You don’t want her touching the ball because she can hurt you in so many different ways.”

Still, the first-team All-GSL forward isn’t looking at this season’s Bullpups as a one-player team.

“Of course I want to keep scoring, I want to be the top scorer, who doesn’t?” Dean said. “But it’s impossible for me to score without the rest of the team, so there’s not that much pressure on me, it’s on the team as a whole.”

In fact, the pressure may not be on the Bullpups at all.

After losing a senior class that included 2003 GSL MVP and 2004 GSL most valuable defensive player Alex Butler as well as All-GSL defender Jessica Miller, Prep is looking at seven freshman and 13 new players overall.

And with University and Mead looking extremely strong and Ferris also expected to make a push at the league title, Birrer thinks the proverbial bull’s-eye may have passed on.

“Last year we had a target on our back, clearly we did, because we won the championship and returned almost our entire starting lineup,” Birrer said. “This year I think the target is firmly fixed on U-Hi and Mead because of the amount of players U-Hi and Mead return and with how well they did last year.

“On paper Mead and U-Hi look very difficult to beat.”

U-Hi might have the strongest returning class in the league. The Titans, third in the GSL and state participants last season, return the league’s top scorer Tonya Schnibbe, influential midfielder Alex Marquard as well as defender Kayla Miller, all members of last season’s All-GSL first-team.

Helping out Schnibbe up front is Rachel Lopez, someone Titan coach Kevin Houston is hoping will take advantage of the inevitable defensive attention Schnibbe will receive.

“With Tonya, people are just going to double-team her,” Houston said. “With Prep last year, as soon as Tonya got the ball she was double-teamed. This year, we have more help with Rachel, a great scorer in her own right, and others who have the potential to score. We’re hoping to have them step up and alleviate some of the pressure on Tonya.”

Mead, entering a new regime under Allen, may be the team with the most talent – at least on paper. The Panthers lost very little to graduation and return All-GSL second-teamers Marissa Mykines, a midfielder, and Jamey Etten, a forward.

The combination of youth and talent has Allen feeling good about the team’s chances.

“We feel we are a legitimate GSL championship-caliber team,” Allen said. “We have goals that include a GSL championship and getting into the district title game. We feel if we play up to our potential, we can go pretty far.”

The key for the Panthers may be convincing extremely talented individuals to buy into the team concept.

“We have so much individual talent,” Allen said. “Position by position we could break down, so we’re trying to focus on winning a state playoff game and the only way to do that is to play together, because individual talent means nothing once you get to the playoffs. … The girls understand we’d rather have team recognition than individual recognition.”

The dark horse could be Ferris, who only has three seniors, but has a load of talent and still has players with significant varsity experience.

All-GSL midfielder Aly Spear returns, as do fellow seniors Casey Burke and Lyndsey Allred, both defenders. Those defenders, in front of goalkeeper Elizabeth Boyden, will provide a daunting backline Saxon opponents will have difficulty beating.

“We’re hoping that’s the case,” Ferris head coach Robin Crain said. “Our other two defenders are juniors and have a lot of experience and all our starters are returning players, so they’re all experienced.”

In the end though, it will come down to someone having to dethrone the two-time defending champs.

“Yeah, they’re the team to beat,” Houston said. “Prep’s always been strong, coming back two years in a row as GSL champs. They’re always the team you look at and go into hoping to beat and win a game there.”

But with the league getting ever stronger, Birrer warns, you can’t take anyone lightly.

“Last year was the most competitive year over the last 15 seasons, maybe ever,” he said. “This year I expect more of the same. … There are about six or seven teams that on any given day could beat each other. And that’s not to say that some of those teams outside that six or seven couldn’t beat you as well. Last year we had 1-0, 2-0 games against teams that finished outside the top six and that shows the depth of our league. You don’t see that in other leagues.”