Despite battling illness, Coupeville High School boys soccer manager Natalie Hollrigel knocked it out of the park Monday during her first time on the stadium microphone. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
A different day, likely a different result.
Battered by a ferocious second-half wind which kept them pinned to their own side of the field Monday, the Coupeville High School boys soccer team needed a miracle.
Unfortunately, it didn’t come, as the Wolves, racked by illness and injury, lost the lead late in the game and fell 4-2 to visiting Mount Baker.
The non-league loss, coming at the hands of a tough Northwest Conference foe, drops Coupeville to 1-1 on the young season.
For a great portion of Monday’s match, it looked like the Wolves would remain undefeated.
Coupeville struck early, rattling home a pair of first-half goals, then held on to a 2-1 lead until late in the game.
But it wasn’t to be, as Baker slipped two final daggers — one off a penalty shot set up by an inadvertent hand ball — into the net in the game’s final three minutes.
The breeze ruffled the jerseys of the players, and a few flags, in the first half, when CHS had the wind at its back, and the Wolves took advantage.
After dodging a major moment of danger when the Mountaineers airmailed a penalty kick into the next town in the game’s second minute, Coupeville struck.
Derek Leyva, dancing with the ball on his toe, slid through a maze of Baker defenders, then splashed home a quick shot into the left corner of the net in the game’s ninth minute.
The second goal in as many games for the Wolf junior, it gives him 26 for his prep career.
Baker answered in less than three minutes, slipping a ball into the net after a wild scrum, but then Coupeville dominated the remainder of the half.
With veterans like Teo Keilwitz and Sam Wynn, and chippy youngsters like Tony Garcia, clamping down on defense, the visitors got zilch the rest of the way before the break.
No goals, and just one shot, on which Wolf goalie Dewitt Cole made a nice save, darting out to snatch the ball practically off of the shooter’s foot.
Looking for a game-buster, CHS found it when James Wood uncorked a long corner kick.
It left Wood’s foot looking like a set-up pass for Leyva, but then snapped like a whip (with a little help from a gust of wind), curving into the net at the last possible moment.
Up 2-1 at the break, things were looking good for Coupeville, other than the fact an already-thin roster had taken a major hit.
With illness ripping through the team, and the school, CHS coach Kyle Nelson only had a single reserve at kickoff, and that vanished when team co-captain Aram Leyva took a nasty shot to the leg shortly before the half.
Once he headed to the sideline, to be replaced by raw-but-ready freshman Andrew Aparicio, Leyva never returned.
With it being a non-conference game, Coupeville coaches made the prudent decision to keep one of their stars out of any more action while his health was in question.
That being said, losing the powerful Leyva and his ability to crash the middle hurt the Wolves.
Nothing hurt quite like the weather, however.
What had started as a brisk breeze became a wall of wind after the break, and Mother Nature made it virtually impossible for Coupeville to get the ball off its side of the field.
Even long hitters like Derek Leyva and Wood had shots muffled by the wind, the ball arcing high up into the sky, before being sucker punched and quickly returning to the turf, sometimes landing behind where it was first hit.
Forced to play all-out defense for 40 minutes straight, with the other team holding the wind advantage, proved to be a thankless task for the Wolves.
Cole made several strong saves, including one in which he went airborne and punched the ball off the crossbar.
That one drew the loudest vocal response from CHS manager/PA announcer Natalie Hollrigel.
Battling illness herself, while operating the mic for the first time, she proved to be a natural, rattling off hard-to-pronounce names during pre-game introductions, then chiming in with strong calls on scores.
She also proudly upheld her Wolf Nation credentials, whispering after one Baker goal, “They scored, I said it, eh … not going to get excited for them.”
Her color commentator, at least when the mic was off, was fellow Wolf star Hannah Davidson, who provided a nice mix of “dad jokes” and one entertaining, if hard to swallow, conspiracy theory revolving around a Coupeville coach being in the witness protection program.
The duo show promise, and now just need to be convinced to leave the mic on the whole game, much like school Athletic Director/announcing wild man Willie Smith has been known to do in the past.
Back on the field, Baker, with an extraordinary amount of help from the wind, pushed home the tying goal in the 63rd minute, the go-ahead score in the 77th, and a final tally in stoppage time after the hand ball.
It got the Mountaineers the win, maybe, but the Wolves deserve a fair amount of praise for standing tall under great duress in the second half.
Plus, when a rival team wins, it’s always best to live by the words of a raspy-voiced Hollrigel.
“Eh, not going to get excited for them.”
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