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LONGVIEW — If you’ve got any questions about soccer in Lewis County this season, go ahead and ask the Lumberjills. The R.A. Long girls soccer team scheduled its entire preseason docket against teams north of the Gospodor Monuments, and made it a clean sweep of the competition with a 3-2 win over Toledo at home on Thursday.
The Jills previously defeated Centralia, 2-0, in the season opener at Tiger Stadium, and then dispatched Napavine, 4-0, on the road earlier this week. Which means the 2B Riverhawks put up the best fight of the bunch, punching above their weight class on the road.
“It was super competitive,” Toledo head coach Horst Malunat said. “It was so intense it felt like a playoff game kind of. I like that intensity because it got physical and we matched that physicality.”
But it was R.A. Long that landed the first blow when Delanie Zueger scored off an assist from Sienna Dorland in the third minute. Twenty minutes later the Jills took a two-goal lead when Breslyn Scheel posted a goal off an assist from Aubrey Vazquez.
The Lumberjills chalked that quick start up to teamwork and intangibles of the game, rather than some inherent superiority from calling Cowlitz County home and being two WIAA classifications larger than their foe.
“Early on I think it was our communication and the girls playing hard for one another,” first-year R.A. Long head coach Angel Orozco said.
As it turned out, the Cheese Town kickers didn’t trek to the big city just for the ambiance. And it was Peyton Holter who helped the Riverhawks get back in the fight with a goal off an assist from Aspen Cooper in the 31st minute.
And that’s where the contest stood at halftime, with the hosts holding a 2-1 advantage and the visitors having landed the last blow. But Toledo fans who followed the Cowlitz River to its confluence with the Columbia didn’t have to wait long before celebrating again in the second half.
That game-tying score on the artificial turf at Memorial Stadium came on an unassisted goal by Onica Chase in the 49th minute.
“I think the natural grass slowed R.A. Long down a little bit at Napavine the other night,” Malunat noted. “But I also felt like we had the team speed to hang right with them. I felt like we competed well.”
The game remained knotted until the 63rd minute when Josie Sully set up Dorland for the go-ahead goal.
“I’ve got to give props to them. It was 2-0 and they did not give up. They were right on it in a very physical game,” Orozco said. “But my girls didn’t shrink under pressure. We were just on them, on them.”
And while R.A. Long put up 16 shots compared to just 10 for the Riverhawks, it’s not as if the Toledo side didn’t have its chances. In fact, the Riverhawks insisted on keeping the hosts uncomfortable all the way down to the wire.
“They were stalling at the end of the game because we were putting pressure on them. They didn’t want us to tie it up,” Malunat noted
R.A. Long deployed a pair of goalies in the contest. Freshman Kelsey Chapin notched one save in the first half for the Jills, and senior Iliana Ruiz posted three saves in the second half, including a diving stop where she took the ball off the attacker’s foot.
Toledo also ran a keeper platoon, with freshman Miley Schlecht handling the first half between the pipes, and junior Ivana Cabrera sporting the mittens in the second half.
Defensively the Riverhawks put an emphasis on slowing down Sully. The sophomore forward had scored two goals in each of the Lumberjills’ first two games this season. As a counter move R.A. Long moved Sully out to the wing in order to shift her spies over toward the sideline and clear up space in the middle in the process.
That adjustment worked for the Lumberjills on Thursday. But, just two days after falling 3-2 at 3A Evergreen in Vancouver, the Riverhawks were feeling plucky after going toe-to-toe again with a larger school on enemy turf.
“I’ve got a lot of 8th and 9th graders in the mix, so I think the biggest adjustment is just the speed of the game where you’ve got less time to get the ball and make decisions,” Malunat noted of the cross-classification matchups. “I thought we competed with them well. This early in the season, we can build on that going forward. There’s no preseason champion.”
Toledo (0-2) will play at Rochester next Thursday.
