TUMWATER — For the second year in a row, Tumwater has fallen just short of the state tournament.
The Thunderbirds strung together another fantastic regular season, winning 13 of their first 18 games en route to another EvCo title, but they fell to R.A. Long 1-0 in a 2A District 4 Elimination Game at Tumwater District Stadium on Saturday.
“Just wasn’t what we needed today,” Tumwater coach Brett Bartlett said. “And it sucks for these girls.”
Chances were few and far between in the first half, but both offenses started to click early in the second.
Tumwater instantly put pressure on the R.A. Long back line and earned a throw-in near the box, and the Lumberjills responded with their best shot of the day, but it sailed just past the post.
The two sides continued to exchange scoring opportunities over the next 20 minutes, but neither team could break the scoreless tie.
“We talked about a couple of things that we weren’t doing that could be to our benefit,” Bartlett said. “We had to execute it in those moments. They put us in good situations. We just didn’t get the goals when we had chances.”
Josie Sully broke the deadlock in the 62nd minute, pouncing on a loose ball in the box to give R.A. Long the lead.
Over the final 20 minutes or so, the T-Birds pushed hard for an equalizer. Just a few minutes after R.A. Long’s goal, Tumwater had the opportunity to jump on a loose ball to tie it, but a defender sent it out of play in the nick of time.
“It was at that point in time that it just became really real,” Bartlett said. “The reality doesn’t always hit until it’s desperation time, and that was where we got to.”
While the end result is the same as it was last fall, Bartlett noted that the end of this game felt much different than last year’s 5-1 loss to Columbia River in the same game.
“They’re both painful,” Bartlett said. “Last year was just a calamity of errors, then you’re trying to climb a hill that there’s no traction … This year, it wasn’t that anybody did anything we couldn’t handle. It was just our consistency in those moments, it wasn’t what we needed.”
The Thunderbirds finish their season 14-4-2, and they will say goodbye to eight seniors, including Emalyn Shaffer, Ava Jones, and Reese Heryford.
“It was a constant state of flux for this group, and that’s really hard on young players,” Bartlett said. “But you gotta play with the cards you’re dealt. That was really what we tried to do, and it didn’t quite work out.”
