The Centralia girls soccer team may have nine weeks until it officially begins its season with a home game against River Ridge, but the Tigers are already ramping things up, and not just practicing against themselves.
Wednesday evening, Centralia welcomed Adna to Tiger Stadium for a scrimmage. It was the second scrimmage of the summer for the Tigers, who went to Eatonville at the end of June, but kicks off a hectic end of the month. Centralia played again at home Thursday against Tenino, and is set for rematches against the Pirates and Beavers next week. After that, they’ll face off against Eatonville and Chehalis, before capping the month off at Tenino’s Battle on the Blacktop.
Not a bad workload for summer “break.”
“I just want to see where everyone is at, where the level is, what to expect,” new Centralia coach Luis Magana Reyna said.
Magana Reyna took over the program after a year as an assistant under Noel Vazquez, now getting ready to lead Centralia College’s inaugural men’s soccer team.
His time as Vazquez’s assistant, as well as his role with the Twin City Union system, has given Magana Reyna plenty of experience with his players, and also served to entrench him in the local soccer community. As soon as he was named head coach at Centralia, those ties paid off.
“It’s cool reaching out to all of the coaches here like Kevin Schultz, Patrick (Richardson), Eric (Burkevics), and Dave Montgomery from Tenino, all of us talking,” Magana Reyna said. “As soon as I found out I got the head job, we all hit each other up and tried to get as many games together as possible. That helped me prep, and I appreciate that.”
Wednesday saw the Tigers and Pirates face off in an odd set-up, breaking the usual 80-minute game into three periods to allow the coaches an extra “halftime” to talk to their squads.
Centralia’s front line, filled with returning starters like Anahi and Jaslin Corona, Alia Gomez, and Olivia Gruginski, struck twice for early goals before the first of many line changes brought on a host of freshmen.
But the evening wasn’t just split between playing time for the returning first team and the newcomers; with Magana Reyna mixing it up the whole time.
“I saw some of the girls coming in like deer in the headlights, kind of confused, but I saw some of the older girls tell them, ‘Hey, this is where you need to go,’” he said. “I like that leadership. I know the girls saw what it took last year … they know that we’re getting there, and that it takes work, leadership, and dedication. I feel like that’s what we tried to create last year, and we’re just going to keep working on that.”
