The W.F. West Bearcats’ momentum stopped in a heartbeat with under two minutes left in regulation against Woodland.
Their team captain Reese Mishler went down with a lower-leg injury, bringing the match to a halt right as the Bearcats were looking to break a 1-1 tie in the District 4 2A elimination match Thursday night at Centralia’s Tiger Stadium.
As Mishler was carried off the pitch, the Bearcats huddled and mutually declared that the game could end in no other fashion than a win for their senior leader.
“This team…they’re so close and so much like a family. In that little break before overtime, all the girls were like, ‘Do it for Reese. Do it for Reese.’ I think it became their rallying call there in overtime and almost gave them that extra boost to go forward,” Bearcats head coach Kevin Schultz said.
If there are soccer gods, they answered every prayer from W.F. West from that point on.
On the final play of regulation, Woodland lined up a free kick from 15 yards out, but it sailed over the bar to send the match to two five-minute overtime periods.
Four minutes into the first five-minute frame, Bearcats senior Wyatt Rogerson delivered a corner kick that bounced off junior Ashlen Gruginski’s forehead and landed flat on the damp turf. Woodland’s keeper fell to her hands and knees in the scrum for the ball, and Gruginski pooched the ball around her and into the right side of the net from point-blank range for the game-winning goal.
“[Wyatt] had a nice ball to me, and I just kind of bobbled it in,” Gruginski said of the goal.
It was all for their teammate Mishler, who they described as a significant part of their team on and off the pitch.
With the victory, W.F. West is once again one win away from its first trip to the state tournament since 2012. The Bearcats have had to take the scenic route to get to this point, as they defeated Ridgefield in the district quarterfinals on Nov. 1 in a match that also exceeded 80 minutes, before falling to Columbia River 5-0 on Tuesday.
On Thursday, it appeared as though the Bearcats and Beavers were poised for a high-scoring affair despite a downpour. Woodland’s Carly Coltrin scored on a penalty kick 10 minutes into the match. Mishler immediately responded, scoring off a corner kick from Rogerson and an assist from Gruginski in the 14th minute.
But for the following 70 minutes of regulation and overtime, both defenses locked in while the offenses struggled to pass the ball in the soggy conditions. The ball seemed to have a mind of its own on the soaked turf, spinning unexpectedly on numerous passes and goal kicks. The rain cleared up at halftime, and the offenses were off and running in the second half.
Both squads traded shots on goal in the opening minute of the second half, and Woodland missed multiple free kicks within the first five minutes. The Bearcats nearly broke the tie with shots by Izzy Teeter and Rogerson, and Lucy Hornby’s 35-yard free kick in the 75th minute missed.
Keeper Rally McReynolds came up clutch late in the match to preserve the tie, and after the emotional rollercoaster of Mishler’s injury and Woodland’s missed free kick at the buzzer, the Bearcats knew what needed to be done.
“We just wanted to go out there and do our thing and do what we knew how to do,” Rogerson said. “We didn’t really want to change things up. We just kept playing.”
On Rogerson’s corner kick, Schultz opted to put Berkeley Varick in front of Woodland’s keeper to obstruct her vision of the kick from Rogerson. Rogerson delivered a beauty right to Gruginski in traffic, and Gruginski took care of the rest. Gruginski’s teammates swarmed her in jubilation while the Beavers stood in shock after the goal.
“We tell our corner kick takers to put it in as close to goal as possible, almost like they’re shooting. Wyatt took a shot there from the corner, their keeper couldn’t find it, and then Ashlen did a really good job of getting on the end of it in the scrum and putting it in the goal,” Schultz said.
W.F. West (14-3-1, 8-2 EvCo) has won multiple games in the district tournament for the first time since 2012 when it won its second of two straight district titles. The Bearcats have one final opponent before they can make their state dreams come true: Tumwater — a team they haven’t defeated since Oct. 12, 2017. Since then, W.F. West has lost to its rival 15 straight times.
The two EvCo foes will square off with a state trip on the line on Saturday at Tumwater High School.
“We have a team that we think could get there, and so we’ve just got to step up and go play,” Schultz said. “I love this group. They’ve worked super hard. If there was a group that’s worked hard enough to get it, it’s this group.”
