Coupeville goaltender Mollie Bailey recorded a shutout Tuesday, lifting the Wolves to a crucial 1-0 win at home against Sultan. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Sultan tried to get rough, but Coupeville is too tough.
Avalon Renninger bled for her team, Nezi Keiper made a rival lose her cool, and Mallory Kortuem proved stronger than the prairie wind, and now the Wolf girls soccer squad is back in the playoff hunt.
Pulling out a 1-0 win against visiting Sultan Tuesday, Coupeville finally broke into the win column after several close calls.
Buffeted by injuries to key players, the Wolves have been better than their 1-9-2 record might indicate.
And now, with the shutout victory against the Turks, Coupeville moves into a tie with Sultan at 1-6 in North Sound Conference play.
With three games left in the regular season, South Whidbey (7-0, 11-0-1) and King’s (6-1, 9-4) are chasing a league title, while Cedar Park Christian (3-4, 6-5) and Granite Falls (3-4, 6-6) are holding steady in the middle of the six-team league.
Five teams make the playoffs, and Coupeville has a slightly easier schedule than Sultan, which plays South Whidbey, King’s, and CPC to wrap up things.
The Wolves travel to CPC Thursday, make a short trip to South Whidbey next Monday, then close at home Wednesday, Oct. 23 against Granite Falls.
If CHS and Sultan remain deadlocked eight days from now, the teams will play a tiebreaker game Oct. 24, and it will be at Coupeville’s Mickey Clark Field.
The #5 seed from the NSC hosts a district play-in game Oct. 26 against the #4 seed from the Northwest Conference, which is currently an 0-12 Mount Baker team.
For their part, the Wolf players would prefer to punch their playoff ticket without having to go through Sultan again, which took the first meeting by a similar 1-0 score.
“I don’t really want to see them anymore,” said freshman Nezi Keiper. “I’m fine if we don’t have to play them again.”
Having already witnessed Renninger bleed on the field after taking an elbow to the nose Tuesday, Keiper, fellow defender Carolyn Lhamon, and goaltender Mollie Bailey shared a laugh about something else late in the game.
At which point a frustrated Turk glared at Keiper and blurted, “It’ll be funny when I punch you in the face.”
To which I say, you picked the wrong Wolf to try and buffalo.
Keiper is a former football lineman, who bench presses 700 pounds and eats nails for breakfast.
Well, at least the first of those three things is true, but she’s also not a player likely to get pushed around on the field anytime soon, under any conditions.
With Keiper and Lhamon, and senior captain Tia Wurzrainer anchoring the defense, the Wolves kept the Turks from mounting much of an attack.
Playing with the wind in the second half, Sultan finally pushed the ball onto the other side of the field, but Bailey was there to meet them with open arms (which collected all their shots).
Sultan’s best scoring opportunity came late in stoppage time, that magical slice of the clock where only the lead ref knows how many ticks of the clock are truly left in the game.
Desperate to get a tying score, the Turks were handed a golden opportunity, awarded a free kick at the 40-yard line.
The ball was mashed on a line, with the wind flowing behind the wobbly orb, but Bailey laughed one final time, stepping in front of the shot, bouncing slightly off the ground, and snaring the incoming missile.
That closed a battle of wills, a donnybrook where the Wolves proved to be the better team on almost every play.
Coupeville had 1,001 shots on goal in the first half, but Sultan net-minder Amanda McKay played inspired ball, deflecting each Wolf attack with precision.
Renninger had a great scoring opportunity, as did Lhamon, as did Sophia Martin, as did Anna Dion, as did Lhamon again, as did Kortuem several times, as did Wurzrainer, unloading a laser from midfield.
Each time McKay was exactly where she needed to be at the very last second, and, even playing with the Whidbey wind gunning for her face, she carried Sultan into the locker room with a scoreless tie intact.
One of her teammates wasn’t quite as lucky, as she dodged the wind only to take a soccer ball to the face from three paces.
Staggered but unbowed, the Turk wobbled, weaved, then kept on playing.
Much like Renninger, the pluckiest of plucky players, the calm, cool, and eternally serene captain who got crunched in the face (fairly accidentally it seemed), and added her blood to the mix of fluids to decorate the Coupeville pitch over the years.
“I thought it was snot,” she told her dad after the game, as she moved her nose gingerly. “It was NOT!!”
Still, Renninger proved why she is among the most-revered of all Wolf athletes, anchoring her squad through the facial pain.
Afterwards, as she headed for the parking lot, her voice a mix of tiredness, pain, and pride, she remarked, “Yep, going home and doing some homework and getting some sleep. Maybe just some sleep … sleep sounds good.”
Making sure Renninger’s dreams will be pleasant, Kortuem went toe-to-toe with the breeze which kept the fans in the stands bouncing around to stay warm.
Slashing through defenders, the ball on her foot, Coupeville’s speed demon cranked a wicked shot through the wind, narrowly slipping it past the outstretched fingers of McKay and into the back of the net.
Her first goal of the season, and fifth of her career, Kortuem’s crowd-pleaser came with 24 minutes to play in the game, and would be all the Wolf defense needed to secure the win.
Afterwards, as his players bounced around, awash in their celebration (and not being punched in the face), CHS coach Kyle Nelson surveyed the scene and smiled.
“A well-deserved victory,” he said. “The defense did a nice job and adjusted with the wind, doing all the right things we talked about.”
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