Saturday's State 1A Girls Soccer: Tenino Falls to Seattle Academy in State Quarterfinals

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TENINO — Tenino had a season to remember in 2019, but it came to an end here on Saturday as Seattle Academy won 5-0 in a State 1A girls soccer tournament quarterfinal game.

It was the first loss of the season for Tenino at 18-1-1 overall.

“I’m so proud of them, just like I just said to them, they’re the best team in school history,” Tenino coach Kevin Schultz said.

The Cardinals started the scoring in the eighth minute. Lucy Van Newkirk crossed it into the box and found the foot of Elliotte Kortus for an early lead. The lead increased to 2-0 just three minutes later as Sophia Stanton corralled the ball at the top of the box, spun around and fired a shot into the back of the net. Annika Daniel scored in the 34th minute for a 3-0 lead at intermission.

“We wanted to play our game. Unfortunately, we weren’t really able to get a lot of film on them, really any film. We knew a little bit, we knew that they were going to try to play stuff through the forward and we wanted to take that away which I felt like we did,” Schultz said. “What we weren’t prepared for was how they exploited us out wide. We didn’t scout that. We didn’t know that was coming so that’s just a little unfortunate but offensively, we wanted to keep the ball and it was just hard. They were putting pressure on the ball everywhere around the field.”

Daniel tallied her second of the night in the 46th minute and Isabella Fonseca notched the final goal of the game in the 74th minute.

“It’s tough. This is what happens at the 1A level, it’s dominated by private schools. They can put a lot of time and a lot of resources into their development as players. They’re a really good team,” Schultz said. “We knew they would be a really good team. We wanted to battle and compete, we wanted to not give up. I felt like the second half, we kept grinding, we kept working. We weren’t dangerous enough offensively but I thought flying around the field and working hard, I can’t fault them for that.”



While the Beavers were notably sad following the end of the season, Schultz was able to reflect on the progress of his team throughout the season, including the back line, which graduated a lot of players from last season.

“The way how they developed, before tonight, never had a game where we gave up more than one goal,” Schultz explained. “They only gave up seven goals all year and so I think that development, defensively, is where we developed the most. Going forward now, it’s going to be developing the ability to keep the ball when teams take away our number one option.”

Kathryn Fittinger is the lone senior for Tenino, so the future looks bright for 2020.

“We’re going to miss Kat. She’s a great leader, great kid, always got us going. She’s the one who started the whole ‘Let’s get this bread’ thing,” Schultz said. “Everyone else coming back, everyone who started this game tonight is coming back so it’s like, we’re a really young team and I’m proud of how they battled all year.”

Schultz is excited for next season but he’s happy with the way the Beavers were able to help change the culture among Tenino sports in exceeding expectations.

“I’m really excited for that but now it’s just reflect on the season we had and enjoy, not just the success on the field but I think changing the culture here,” Schultz said. “Changing the culture around the community and the school of like, Tenino is here to win and compete and showing everyone what hard work can do for you. I think that’s what they did this year, they showed that their hard work paid off.”