EVERETT — The Peninsula College men’s soccer team remained unbeaten, but the women’s team saw some impressive streaks come to an end in a 1-0 loss to Everett.
That one goal was the first scored on the Peninsula women this season, and Wednesday’s loss halted a 20-game win streak.
The Pirates had not lost a match since Sept. 8, 2013, when they fell to University of the Fraser Valley 3-0, and it’s been two seasons since they lost to a community college, dating back to Oct. 6, 2012, when they dropped a 1-0 match at Walla Walla.
The Peninsula women, ranked sixth in the latest National Soccer Coaches Association of America junior college poll, have never lost at Sigmar Field since the facility was opened in the fall of 2011.
The Pirate men defeated Everett 2-1 to position themselves atop the Northwest Athletic Conference’s West Division with a 4-0 record and a 6-0 overall mark, followed closely by Highline at 3-0-1 and Bellevue at 3-3-0.
Everett slipped to 0-3-1 in the North Division.
The women’s loss puts them in unfamiliar territory, trailing Highline in the West by one point.
Highline, now the only unbeaten team in the NWAC, is 4-0-1, while the Pirates fell to 4-1-0 (6-1-0 overall). Bellevue is third at 2-1-4.
The victory catapulted Everett into a commanding lead in the North at 5-1-0.
Women’s Game
Everett 1, Peninsula 0
While Wednesday’s road loss might have been heartbreaking for the Pirates, it by no means is the end of their run of two straight conference championships.
In 2012, when they last lost to an NWAC opponent, the women recovered and went on to win the NWAC championship.
The Pirates also managed to open 2014 winning six straight games and giving up no goals with a cast of talented players on the bench nursing injuries.
They return to the pitch Saturday when they tackle the 1-2-2 Skagit Valley Cardinals at 5 p.m. in Mount Vernon.
“It was a pretty even game,” women’s and men’s head coach Kanyon Anderson said. “We had a stretch of five poor minutes, got an unlucky bounce, and their player pounced on the opportunity.”
That player was Rachel Detroit, and her goal came in the 66th minute and held up as the game winner.
Most of the match was played in the middle of the field.
Peninsula’s Manaia Siania-Unutoa, a redshirt freshman keeper from Waipahu, Hawaii, had only three saves in the match, while Everett’s Rachel Leupold finished with five saves and earned the shutout.
Men’s Game
Peninsula 2, Everett 1
The Pirates, ranked No. 14 in the NSCAA poll, played first Wednesday and wasted very little time getting on the scoreboard.
Sophomore midfielder Caio Maciel made good on a penalty kick just three minutes into the match.
Maciel, of Salvador, Brazil, leads the Pirates and is tied for seventh in scoring with 12 points (five goals, two assists).
Peninsula struck again just 21 minutes into the match when Kassio Monteiro, a sophomore midfielder from Sao Paulo, Brazil, took a shot off a set piece and the ball hit the crossbar.
Teammate Chris Chertude was there to head home the rebound for this third goal of the season.
Everett took advantage of a Pirate defensive miscue 12 minutes into the second half that resulted in a goal by Jared Laurence, but the Pirates held on, getting nine saves from Aaron Zavolokin to preserve the win.
It was Zavolokin’s first action of the season.
Peninsula and Clark (2-0-2, 5-0-2) remain the only unbeaten teams in the NWAC. The two teams will meet in a non-conference match at Clark on Oct. 18 in a rematch of last year’s NWAC championship game that was won 1-0 by the Pirates.
In the meantime, the Pirates travel to face the North Division’s second-place team, Skagit Valley, on Saturday night. Kickoff is 7:30 p.m.
Men’s streaks
While the Peninsula women saw its unbeaten streaks end, the men’s team’s are still intact.
The men’s last loss was more than two years ago, Sept. 1, 2012, to Northwest College of Wyoming, an NJCAA team. That’s a span of 50 games without a loss.
The Pirates’ last loss to a conference team was in the NWAC semifinals to eventual champion Chemeketa on Nov. 11, 2011. That’s 52 straight conference games without suffering a loss.
Peninsula’s last regular season loss to an NWAC team was Oct. 27, 2010, when the Pirates fell 1-0 to Highline. That is an unbeaten streak of 57 games.
