Seven local girls soccer teams put on one last dress rehearsal before the fall season begins Friday, taking to Bob Peters Field at Centralia College for a jamboree.
Centralia, W.F. West, Rochester, Tenino, Adna, Napavine, and Onalaska all came, with Elma coming in from Grays Harbor County to complete the eight-team field.
“It’s cool to bring all the local teams together, and to do it at a new facility,” first-year WFW coach Kevin Schultz said. “And as a coach, all of us coaches know each other, so it’s cool we all get to talk and catch up. It’s a good start to the season. I think everybody likes jamborees; they’re like 40 stress-free minutes where you just get to see stuff.”
The eight teams each played two 20-minute matches, with games starting at 5 p.m. and running through 9.
Centralia opened the evening’s proceedings against Elma, losing the matchup 1-0. In their second dose of action, the 2A Tigers battled Napavine to a scoreless draw.
“It was an okay performance,” Centralia coach Luis Magana Reyna said. “It just made me realize that we still need to work on a lot of things.”
That started a defensive trend on the night; after Elma’s win over Centralia, there were six straight 0-0 ties, with just about everybody having trouble covering the full-size, professional-width field at CC.
“Like I told our girls, the field we play and practice on is a postage stamp compared to this,” Schultz said. “So we had to adjust to that.”
Onalaska finally bucked the pattern in the night’s final matchup, finding the goal three times in a 3-0 win over Rochester.
For Napavine coach Mike Dieckman, two 0-0 draws against 2A competition — the Tigers also drew with W.F. West — was nothing but a positive. Napavine brings back 10 starters from last year, with an experienced back line of Clara Fay, Emma Stewart, Maya Kunkel, and Maddie Dickinson in front of Taylen Evander.
“Tactically, they’re way, way ahead of where they stopped last year,” he said. “They’re moving the ball around well. We’ve been trying to get less dribbling and more passing.”
Off the pitch, in the baseball infield portion of Bob Peters Field, the coaches whose teams weren’t playing got to turn the evening into a sort of convention, catching up with each other and coaches from Centralia College before the season gets underway.
“It’s good to see all the familiar faces,” Magana Reyna said. “All of us coaches get along pretty well. There’s not a big rivalry.”
