The postseason is a whole new story from the regular season, but the W.F. West girls soccer team’s matchup against R.A. Long to open the one looked a whole lot — at least on the scoreboard — like their date with the Lumberjacks early in the other Tuesday, in a 5-0 loss to open play at the 2A District 4 tournament.
“I don’t think the scoreline was necessarily representative of the game entirely,” WFW coach Kevin Schultz said. “But obviously they’re a very good team.”
Back in September, R.A. Long came to Chehalis and after 21 minutes, found the opening goal, doubled the lead six minutes later to take the wind out of W.F. West’s sails en route to a 6-0 win.
Tuesday, it took 23 minutes of back-and-forth play for the Lumberjacks to find the opener, but only two minutes after that to get the second and put things thoroughly in their order.
“We talk about it all the time how you can’t put your head down, and we kind of put our head down in that next five minutes and gave up another goal,” Schultz said.
R.A. Long added three more goals in the second half to get their five goals. Kathryn Chapin bagged a hat trick to lead the way for the guests, and Alice Anderson scored the other two goals.
The closest the Bearcats came to scoring came from R.A. Long as well, when a pass back to the goalkeeper took a bad hop at the top of the 18-yard box and nearly made it all the way into the net before it was swept off the goal line.
W.F. West finished with four shots on target and earned itself a heaping of corner kicks, but couldn’t do much with them.
“Goal-scoring is the hardest thing to do,” Schultz said. “We work on it, we work on it and we work on it, and it just hasn’t translated yet. But we’re hoping that somewhere along the way here we’re going to get there.”
The result was just one part of an evening that represented a one-way relationship between the 2A EvCo and the 2A GSHL, with the southern league winning all three games between the two leagues by a combined score of 8-0.
Throw in the Saturday pigtail win for Woodland over Centralia, and the GSHL is 4-0 against the EvCo with nine goals scored and zero allowed.
“I think part of it is the quality of players down there is a little bit higher, and I think they have more players that put more time into it,” Schultz said.
W.F. West will get the next crack to change that lopsided dynamic Thursday, when it hosts Woodland in a loser-out match. The Beavers lost to defending state champs Columbia River on Tuesday, 7-0.
