The early road didn’t get any easier for the W.F. West girls soccer team Thursday, as R.A. Long hung up six goals in a 6-0 shutout to mar the Bearcats’ home opener.
RAL broke the scoreless deadlock in the 21st minute, made it 2-0 six minutes later, and scored in stoppage time to go into halftime up 3-0, just like that.
“I felt for the first 20 minutes, we were fine. They were definitely the better team before the first goal, but things were going fine,” first-year coach Kevin Schultz said. “After the first goal, we kind of put our heads down and let things snowball. In the second half, there was no energy in our team.”
The Lumberjills added two more goals in a three-minute span in the 49th and 52nd minutes, then converted a penalty kick to make it 6-0 in the 75th.
Kathryn Chapin did the bulk of the damage for the RAL with a hat trick, and Alice Anderson added a goal and three assists.
WFW goalkeeper Staysha Fluetsch, under siege for most of the night, still logged 11 saves despite the six goals allowed.
For their part, the Bearcats managed just three shots on target.
“Offensively, we just struggled to connect passes,” Schultz said. “When you’re defending the entire game, you're going to give up goals, because you don’t have the ball.”
Combined with a 4-2 loss to 1A La Center on Tuesday, the Bearcats have allowed 10 goals in the first 160 minutes of the season.
“We knew this was going to be a tough week,” Schultz said. “Hopefully it wakes us up to the reality that we need to keep growing and we need to do some more stuff to continue to improve.”
W.F. West will get one more non-league matchup to cap off its opening week Saturday, when it hosts another 2A GSHL side in Mark Morris.
