By Michael Carman
Peninsula Daily News
TUKWILA — Two second-half scores by Sam Oliveira lifted the Peninsula College women’s soccer team to a 2-0 win over Tacoma in an NWAC semifinal contest at Starfire Sports Complex on Friday.
The Pirates (21-0-0) will defend their 2018 championship Sunday at 11 a.m. against Highline (16-0-2), which defeated Walla Walla 5-4 in penalty kicks in the other semifinal.
Peninsula will be playing for its fifth NWAC Championship in its eighth overall title game appearance since the program’s inception in 2010.
After a slow, deliberate offensive first half for Peninsula in Friday’s match, the game was tied 0-0.
“You can compare it to the NCAA [Basketball] Tournament, you may not play the greatest first half of your first game but if you can win and advance you are still alive for the championship,” Pirates head coach Kanyon Anderson said.
“That might have been the worst half we played in two months. I give a lot of credit to Tacoma for that, but we were not very good and fortunate to be tied.”
Peninsula College’s Sam Oliveira (25) scored two goals for the Pirates as Peninsula won its NWAC semifinal 2-0 over Tacoma on Friday. The women will play in the NWAC championship at 11 a.m. Sunday. (Photo courtesy of Peninsula College)
Peninsula goalkeeper Andrea Kenagy and defender Kaiya Denis were effective for Peninsula.
“Drea made a couple of great saves at the beginning,” Anderson said. “Kaiya is such a warrior, those two were huge for us.”
At halftime, the motivational speech was simple.
“Our halftime talk boiled down to ‘Do better,’ ” Anderson said. “We weren’t linking up our passes, or beating players to the ball. Tacoma is a tenacious team, they bumrushed Columbia Basin and did the same to Clark [earlier in the tournament]. They are Well-coached, organized, fit and aggressive and they were motivated. A lot of their success was them going after it.”
The Pirates broke through in the 54th minute. Peninsula played the ball up from the back line via a header to Sammy Howa at midfield. Howa dribbled forward, sending a pass that deflected off a Tacoma defender and into the path of an on-running Oliveira. Oliveira dribbled and fired from the top of the 18-yard box to the far post for a 1-0 lead.
“That was a fantastic shot by Sam O, very calm and accurate, and a great play by Sammy Howa,” Anderson said.
A great run on the right side by Miya Clarke led to the Pirates’ second goal in the 69th minute.
Clarke beat a Tacoma defender to the corner and sent in a cross into the box that the Titans goalkeeper couldn’t corral. The ball bounced off Peninsula’s Addie Becker and on to Oliveira who finished from point-blank range for a 2-0 lead.
The scores were Oliveira’s 22nd and 23rd goals on the season — tops in the NWAC. She’s also now tied for the second-best single season goal total in Peninsula history with Bri Afoa and tied with Sydney Warren with 43 goals — good for second all-time in program history.
“I was just tracking back,” Oliveira said of the second goal. “Miya was coming on and Addie, I thought she might get a touch on it. I just put myself in position to clean up the trash, doing my job. And when we say at the start of the game that we have each other’s backs, we have each others’ backs.”
Today’s game will be the third championship match between the Pirates and the Thunderbirds in the last four seasons. Peninsula also beat Highline to make last season’s final and in the 2016 semifinals on the way to a championship victory.
“They are good, they have good chemistry, good athletes,” Anderson said of the T-Birds.
“It’s the right [matchup in the] final, probably. They don’t have a big bench, so their players have played lots of minutes, which is great if you can avoid injury because you develop so much chemistry.”
And Anderson said there are differing ways to view how the semifinals will impact the final — with Peninsula able to substitute players out for rest late in its game, while Highline went the distance and won a tight game on penalty kicks.
“They could be on an emotional high,” Anderson said. “It might be a benefit going to penalty kicks because you believe you are a team of destiny. It will be pretty neutral starting point going in.
“One of the things I told the team is, ‘No matter what happens, the semifinal doesn’t win you or lose you the final. You inflate the balloon as much as you can in the semifinals, but you start the next game with it fully deflated.”
