By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SILVERTON, Ore.– The West Albany Girls Soccer team came in with 13 girls healthy and ready to compete against one of the tougher teams in the Mid-Willamette Conference in Silverton Thursday night.
But despite having two substitutes on their bench, the Bulldogs came ready to play and rose to the occasion. That mental grit and being the hungriest team out helped West Albany stay the course in their 2-0 defeat to the Foxes.
“It was a competitive, hard-fought battle. I told the girls, ‘now we know what we can do’, and that’s not even at 100 percent,” said Bulldogs Head Coach Erin Ordeman. “We talked about continuing to play our soccer and how we know we’re capable of playing. We say that we have to be the hungriest team, we don’t want to play desperate, but we got to play with urgency and this whole game I felt like we played with this urgency and willingness to be physical and shake off what can be hard mentally…to play that mental game, we know what we can do now.”
Silverton got their two goals in the opening minute of the first and second half with Madisyn Walter scoring in the first half and Marley Wertz scoring in the second half that proved to be enough in Thursday’s victory for the Foxes. It stems from their goal of coming out with energy and starting each half strongly.
“It’s been a big goal for us all season, and it’s been a struggle for us all season coming out strong. We’ve been a second-half team, and coming out and scoring that fast in the first minutes of the first half is really big for us,” said Walter. “Just bring energy and know that we can move the ball fast and know that we can come out strong. It’s a really big deal for us.”
Coming off of their lone defeat of the season to David Douglas last week, the game served as a good eye-opener for the Foxes, who are now 2-0 in MWC play going into Tuesday’s game on the road at Corvallis.
“It was kind of eye-opening to see that a lot of teams are coming out and it’s all on the line every game and we just got to come out and not lose sight that each game is a new game, each team is a different team and we got to come out fired up each time no matter the rankings and play our game, each game,” said Walter.
West Albany will host Crosstown Rival South Albany on Tuesday at 7pm.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
