The Tenino Beavers girls soccer team has been making adjustments after losing Brienna Dell, the school’s all-time leading scorer, and all-league defender/midfielder Iris Campesino, who are both playing at Evergreen State College.
Against rival Rochester in the opening round of the Beavers’ annual Battle on the Black Top tournament, Tenino coach Kevin Schultz continued his tinkering to figure out how to replace Dell who, with 106 career goals, was basically like having two forwards.
At the beginning of summer, Schultz changed his usual one-forward formation to two to compensate for Dell’s departure.
“The first game we did it, the girls were kind of confused and lost,” Schult said.
So they went back to their normal formation and everything started to click again. On Thursday against Rochester, Schultz experimented again. He put senior Grace Vestal, a first-team, all-league midfielder, up as the lone forward to see what would happen.
“She did well but it was definitely obvious also that we missed her not being in the midfield,” Schultz said. “So when we slid her back in the midfield and put Emma Barr up top, Emma did a really good job.”
It worked as Barr scored back-to-back goals in the 22nd and 25th minutes to help Tenino jump out to a 3-0 halftime lead and the Beavers held off Rochester for a 4-0 victory.
“She’s just one of those players that always finds the right spot at the right time,” Schultz said.
Senior Megan Letts scored the opening goal of the match in the 17th minute off an assist by Alivia Hunter and freshman Paisley Garcia knocked in the final goal in the 48th minute from an assist by Kami Oliveira.
“Obviously, winning 4-0 is good,” Tenino coach Kevin Schultz said. “Summertime’s fun because you get to mess with different things and move players around a bit.”
With 23 players on the roster, including 14 seniors, Schultz said it was nice to get most of their program that’s been working on summer stuff into the game Thursday. He praised their defense for shutting out the Warriors. The Beavers outshot them 15-2, including 5-1 on corner kicks.
“All in all, pretty solid performance,” Schultz said.
In the second game of the tourney Thursday night, Adna defeated a strong Class 4A Olympia team, 2-1, with the help of some talented Toledo pickups.
Toledo’s Rose Dillon scored in the 10th minute off an assist from fellow Toledo player Marina Smith to put Adna up early. In the 17th minute, Summer White scored what would be the game-winning goal from an assist by Sadie Burdick to put Adna up 2-0. Olympia closed out the scoring with a goal in the 35th minute. Jordanne Moon tallied five saves in goal for Adna.
Adna faces W.F. West at 6:45 p.m. on Friday. The Bearcats fell to Yelm 5-1 in the third game Thursday night.
Other Friday action includes Tenino vs. Yelm at 5:30 p.m. and Rochester vs. Olympia at 8 p.m.
