TUKWILA — The Peninsula College women’s soccer team swept a pair of contests and the Pirate men split its matches at the regular-season opening NWAC Friendlies at Starfire Sports Complex.
Peninsula women’s coach Kanyon Anderson said there were rough patches of play in both games but he was happy to come away with its 3-1 win over Clark on Thursday and a 4-3 win over Spokane, which finished third in the NWAC last season, in Friday’s game.
“We played two really good halves of soccer and two pretty uninspired halves of soccer,” Anderson said.
“Against Clark I thought we played poorly in the first and pretty well in the second. And against Spokane we played really well in the first half, but to use a cliche, we didn’t put a full 90 minutes together and we were pretty fortunate to get the result that we got.”
Bri Duran scored her first collegiate goal assisted by Malia Brudvik in Peninsula’s win over Clark, while Sydney Warren, the team’s leading returning scorer, notched the eventual game-winning goal and an insurance tally off of assists by Jayne Morikawa and Sarah Reiber.
Peninsula led 4-1 at halftime against Spokane after getting goals by Sam Guzman off of an assist by Jordyn DiCintio, Kelly Kevershan, Maddy Parton and Janis Martinez-Ortiz, assisted by Pi’ilani Chaves.
“Spokane made some tactical changes at halftime and their plan was to be real direct at us and we gave up two goals in 10 minutes in the second half and made it a fight,” Anderson said.
“So there was good and bad, a really wide spectrum of play.
The Pirate women host Tacoma in a nonleague match at 11 a.m. Tuesday.
Peninsula men split
TUKWILA — The Peninsula soccer men won their first match of the year Thursday and in the process got perhaps a tiny bit of revenge against the team that knocked them out of last year’s postseason.
The Peninsula men beat Tacoma Thursday 4-2 thanks to three goals in the second half and lost Friday 3-1 to Spokane at the season-opening Northwest Athletic Conference Friendlies at the Starfire Sports Complex.
The Pirates got new coach Jake Hughes his first win as well against Tacoma. The NWAC defending champion Titans beat the Pirates in a heartbreaking quarterfinal last year that came down to extra penalty kicks.
The Pirates’ Cesar Gervacio led off the season where he left off last year, scoring two goals. Adrian Benitez had a hat trick of assists while Sterling Penniston-John and Juan Carrillo-Perez also scored.
Tacoma got up 1-0 and 2-1, but the Pirates ended the game with three straight goals in the final 38 minutes.
Against Spokane, Manuel Galiano scored Peninsula’s lone goal in the 15th minute. Luis Perez-Martinez had the assist.
Peninsula (1-1, 0-0) plays one more nonleague game at Pierce College on Sept. 5.
