The Beautiful Game is finding a beautiful part of the world to settle down in.
We’ve got a soccer mecca here on the Olympic Peninsula. We all know about the success of the men and women’s teams at Peninsula College, with the women winning the NWAC title in 2016 and playing in the championship match in 2017.
That success seems to be filtering down to the high school level and younger.
The Port Angeles girls team made a huge run in the state tournament this year, losing in the state quarterfinals and coming within one goal of making it to the state semis.
That’s just the start of the success that’s been happening locally this year.
Boys’ soccer teams in Forks, Port Angeles and Sequim have an eye-opening combined record of 26-6-4. Forks at 9-0-1 is undefeated two-thirds of the way through the season. Sequim is 8-1-1 against teams not named Roughriders or Spartans.
And kids from all of these teams play on select teams that don’t just hold their own against select teams from Seattle, they dominate.
The Storm King U17 team, made up of Port Angeles and Sequim kids, went 10-1-1 in the North Puget Sound League, the best record in the league. The Storm King U19 team, which has Port Angeles, Forks and Sequim kids, went 9-2-1 in its division. That’s going up against Bellevue, Tacoma, Kitsap and Seattle select teams.
The Storm King U17 team also made it all the way to the championship game of the 2018 Washington Cup, losing in the championship 1-0 to a powerful team from Seattle.
Meanwhile, the Storm King U11 team also went 11-1, again going up against Seattle teams.
Special in Forks
Something special is particularly happening in Forks, where the Spartans are one win away from an Evergreen 1A title. Forks coach Joe Morton said it’s becoming a football-like atmosphere for the soccer squad, with pep bands at the school before the game and huge crowds coming out to watch the Forks kids, who went their first five matches without so much as giving up a goal.
Meanwhile, the Port Angeles and Sequim teams are battling for the Olympic League 2A Division title. Sequim, sitting in second place, has a better shot at the title, but the red-hot Wolves, winners of five straight in league, have yet to beat the Roughriders, who they will play at Civic Field at 6:45 p.m. today. The last time these two teams played in a friendly, they tied 4-4.
Both teams are going to make the playoffs. They’re playing for playoff positioning and a possible league title on the line. It’s a great dynamic, teammates on those Storm King teams facing off against each other with a lot to play for.
I never covered soccer until 1994 when I covered a first-year team in Friday Harbor. It was a coed team in a league full of boys, because there was no girls’ league yet. They played on a 50-yard-wide football field, sometimes with standing water in the field because the drainage was so bad.
I have to be honest, I was mystified by the sport at first until I realized it is basically a slightly more complicated and less psychotic version of hockey. One day watching it, it simply made sense. Though, I still had to have a couple of soccer coaches have to lecture me about not using hockey lingo in my stories (For instance, the area directly in front of the net in hockey is the slot, which it’s never called in soccer, and a goal between the legs is a nutmeg, not a five-hole. Yup, I got both of those wrong.).
That first Friday Harbor team I believe went winless. They barely had a chance against teams that had been around for years. They split the teams up into boys and girls teams after a couple of years. It took the girls I think another year or so to finally win their first game. But, slowly those teams got better and competitive and became consistent playoff teams. It was really fun to watch the program grow from the painful beginnings.
In those days, Friday Harbor had atrocious, I mean painfully bad, football teams. I’m amazed the program wasn’t disbanded the teams were so bad. So, it was much more fun to cover the more competitive soccer teams. I came to appreciate the sport more after showing up at my first-ever soccer match thinking to myself, “what the hell am I supposed to write about this sport?”
I’ve come a long way since then and the sport has come a long way since then in Washington and the U.S. with the women’s World Cup championships and the success of the Sounders and the amazing success we have here with the Peninsula College teams.
Come on out to Civic Field tonight and catch a glimpse of the Beautiful Game if you will.
