Coupeville Sports

After a tough 4-3 loss Tuesday at Sultan, Alex Jimenez and his CHS soccer teammates will have to fight to earn a home playoff game. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Kyle Nelson is not especially fond of making road trips to Sultan.

The Coupeville High School soccer coach has made the trek twice this school year, and both times things ended badly.

During the fall, Nelson’s girls’ squad fell 1-0 in a game which proved to be fatal to the Wolves bid for a playoff spot.

Tuesday night, it was time for the Wolf boys to head to Sultan, and, despite a late rally, they fell short on the same artificial turf field, dropping a 4-3 heartbreaker.

While this defeat won’t keep the Coupeville boys from playing in the postseason — they’ve already clinched a playoff berth — it still stings.

The biggest reason is a win would have solidified the Wolves hold on the #3 seed from the North Sound Conference.

Instead, at 2-4 in league play, 4-7 overall, CHS slips a half-game back of Sultan (2-3, 3-8).

South Whidbey (5-0, 9-1) and King’s (5-1, 6-2-1) are battling for the conference crown, while Cedar Park Christian (0-6, 0-8) sits mired in the cellar of what became a five-team league after Granite Falls was unable to field a squad this season.

The #3 NSC team gets a home district playoff opener against the #5 NSC team, while the #4 squad has to travel to play the #3 Northwest Conference squad.

Both games are loser-out affairs, but, if you win your first game, you advance to the double-elimination portion of the bracket.

Coupeville, which played five straight on the road, culminating in Tuesday’s loss, closes the regular season at home with games Apr. 19 against CPC and Apr. 23 vs. South Whidbey.

Sultan faces South Whidbey (Apr. 19), King’s (Apr. 23), and CPC (Apr. 25) for its stretch run.

While the Wolves have lost four straight, the Turks are coming on strongly, winning three straight after losing their first eight. One of those defeats, a 2-0 loss, came at Coupeville earlier in the season.

Tuesday night Sultan jumped all over the Wolves in the early going, building a 3-0 lead before the halftime break.

Aram Leyva got one goal back for Coupeville, mashing “a well-taken penalty kick” for his 10th goal of the season.

The Turks responded with the equalizer early in the second half, stretching the lead back out to 4-1, before Derek Leyva stormed the net, rattling home a pair of scores to make things tight.

The back-to-back goals gives Derek Leyva 11 on the season, and 35 for his CHS career, pulling him closer to cousin Abraham Leyva’s school career record of 45 goals.

With the clock ticking down, the Wolves pushed the attack, desperate to knot things back up and force overtime, but it wasn’t to be.

“Unfortunately there seems to be a Sultan curse on me,” Nelson said. “We had a few other great attempts at goals in the closing minutes to make for an exciting game, but ultimately we paid for our slow start.”