PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College has qualified for the Northwest Athletic Conference soccer playoffs every year since 2004, so it was no surprise that the two-time defending champion Pirate men and women are once again in the thick of the 2014 playoff picture.
The NWAC’s third-ranked Pirate men (12-1-4) tied for the West Division championship with Highline and open the playoffs with a First Round match at home at 1 p.m. today against unranked Pierce (4-11-1), the third-place finishers in the South Division.
In today’s First Round playoff match, the Pirates will face a scrappy Pierce team that managed to sneak into the playoffs with only four wins.
They have scored 22 goals and allowed 45.
The Pirates, meanwhile, were ranked No. 1 all year before falling to Highline 1-0 on Oct. 22.
The PC men have scored 37 goals and allowed just 14.
The Pirates are led by Caio Maciel, a sophomore midfielder from Salvador, Brazil, whose 10 goals ranked eighth in the NWAC in scoring. Eddie Benito has six goals, and Chris Chertude, Kassio Monteiro and Micah Weller have four each.
Trevan Estrellado, a freshman midfielder from Cheney, leads the team in assists with five, which ranks him ninth in the NWAC in that category. Benito is right behind with four assists and Chertude has three.
Aaron Zavolokin and Oscar Torres have shared time in goal for the Pirates, each posting one shutout.
Admission for playoff matches at Sigmar Field is $4 for adults and $2 for seniors and youth.
The winner travels to face top-ranked North Idaho (15-1-2) in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Saturday.
“Our men have been outright West champions for four straight years, so this path presents them with some adversity, but the NWAC championship is going through North Idaho one way or another, so we’ll focus on Pierce and then hopefully we’ll get a shot at NIC,” said director of athletics Rick Ross.
“I’m just thrilled that things worked out to keep their string of West Division championships alive.”
The West title is the seventh in the 14-year history of the men’s program, and the sixth in a row.
The No. 1 Peninsula College women (17-1-2), who also tied with Highline for the West Division title, will host the winner of Wednesday’s First Round match at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Sigmar Field on the PC campus.
That first round match pits Edmonds (12-5-2), the third place team in the North, against Treasure Valley (15-3-3), the second place team in the East, at Ontario, Oregon, on Wednesday.
The women’s divisional championship marks the fourth straight for the Pirates, who are in their fifth year of existence.
The women earned the No. 1 playoff seed by virtue of head-to-head play with Highline, while the Highline men earned the No. 1 seed due to a playoff tiebreaker numbering system, since the two teams split their matches.
Both Peninsula teams hope to return to the NWAC Final Four, set for Nov. 15-16 at the Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila, where both teams managed to do something no college has ever done, winning women’s and men’s back-to-back NWAC championships in 2013.
