TENINO — The Tenino soccer team’s home matchup against Adna on Thursday wasn’t so much a tale of two halves of one of 65 minutes, followed by a sequel of 15. No matter how exactly it’s sliced, neither story had a goal to its name, with the Pirates and Beavers settling for a 0-0 non-league tie — though it left the two sides in completely different moods.
For the Pirates (0-3-1), it was the first result in a string of four non-league games against higher-classification teams. For the Beavers (5-0-1), it was the first time dropping points, after they dominated the share of chances for the first hour.
“It was definitely a tale of two benches, where they’re fired up that it’s still 0-0 and they might have a chance to win one, and we’re pretty annoyed that we haven’t scored yet when we felt like we had all the better chances for large portions of the game,” Tenino coach Dave Montgomery said.
For much of the match, the feeling on the Tenino side of things was that just one breakthrough goal would burst the dam and lead to another huge offensive outing.
Unfortunately for the Beavers, that dam — named Jordanne Moon, in this case — had no give to her.
“She was huge,” Adna coach Patrick Richardson said.
The Adna senior goalkeeper made five saves in the first half. The biggest came in the 25th minute, when Abagail Archibald whipped in a low free kick from 40 yards out that was redirected, but Moon got down to her left to make the save — and then make another on a follow-up effort.
Just over 10 minutes later, Tenino’s best run of build-up play found Callie Mickelson in a one-on-one, but Moon stood up to her for another huge stop.
For Tenino, which had scored 37 goals in its first five games, it was a tough grind to take.
“The final touch kind of let us down,” Montgomery said. “We had several crosses that could have been dangerous, but ended up being straight into the goalkeeper’s hands, rather than into a dangerous space where our forwards can get on the end of it.”
Moon logged five more saves in the first 17 minutes of the second half to finish with 10 on the night.
But as the clock hit the 70-minute mark, the field began to shift the other way.
“We could see things clicking in that first half, so we knew that keeping it at 0-0 would give us chances in the second half,” Richardson said. “Every run we made, that momentum built, we got that next gear going, and it started to wear Tenino’s team out.”
In the 71st minute, the Pirates won a long free kick, and Lydia Tobin’s direct shot rattled off the crossbar. That kicked off a dominant spell for Adna, which suddenly had all the momentum, and forced four saves out of Tenino’s Dakota Lees in the final nine minutes to keep things level.
“We didn’t sub, because we had that momentum going,” Richardson said. “I told my bench that, partway through, ‘The mojo’s flowing, so we’re going to ride it unless we need to (change).’ They were bought in.”
Adna is set to head across the mountains Saturday to Quincy, where they’ll face off against Tonasket. Tenino, meanwhile, will get the weekend to prepare for another matchup against a contender from the Central 2B League, taking on Kalama on Monday.
