Coupeville Sports

Kendra Warwick scored a beauty of a goal Saturday.

They won the style battle. Just not the game.

Despite scoring much more impressive goals, the GU19 Whidbey Islanders select soccer squad couldn’t quite tally enough of them Saturday, eventually falling 3-2 to the visiting Bellevue Ravens.

When they did beat the Bellevue goaltender, the Islanders did it with panache.

On their first score, Micky LeVine, under a great deal of pressure, fed the ball flawlessly to Kendra Warwick, who was lurking in the middle of the field.

Blasting the ball like a laser, Warwick buried it into the side netting before the Raven goalie had a chance to blink.

Trailing 3-1, the Islanders pulled closer with another beautiful goal.

This time Lydia Peplinksi, pushing up the field from her right defender position, found a streaking Kenzie Perry, who flicked the ball out of the air and past a scrambling net-minder.

“They had one nice goal, but if we got style points for our goals, then we would have won for sure,” said Islander coach Sean LeVine.

While they played from behind most of the day, the Islanders were competitive and had moments of brilliance.

“This was a hard fought game and we almost pulled off the comeback,” LeVine said. “While this wasn’t our best game, our team played hard for a full 90 and I was convinced we were the better team.

“But, we made a few too many errors on both sides of the ball and they were able to capitalize on our defensive errors and we did not capitalize on theirs enough.”

When Whidbey returns to action in two weeks (it has a home game at Ft. Nugent Park on Sunday, Feb. 22), it will finally have a deeper roster.

After playing much of the early season with only 11 girls (sometimes less), the Islanders will welcome back two of their best players, Jacalyn Hefflefinger and Paige Waterman.