Fourth place isn’t how coach Dave Brasher and the Wolves (8-4 in the Olympic League and 9-5-2 overall) expected to finish their regular season. But the positioning isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“I feel good about going in as the No. 4 seed,” Brasher said. “We’re going in under the radar.”
Sequim ended its season with a 4-1 win on May 7 at home over the Olympic Trojans.
The Wolves must play a pigtail game at Franklin Pierce High School on Tuesday to advance into the districts tournament. They’ll play Clover Park or White River, who play late Monday for the fourth- and fifth-place seeds from the 2A South Puget Sound League.
The pigtail winner advances to the first round of districts and would play Franklin Pierce, the No. 2 seed from the SPSL, at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 14, at Fife Stadium.
The determining game for fifth or sixth at state is 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at Art Crate Stadium. “We’ll have to capitalize on possession time,” Brasher said. “We’re solid in the back. We’re going to work on attacking and we’ll just have to take advantage of all the chances we get.”
Last year, Sequim went 1-1 at the Olympic League seeding tournament with a 2-1 win over North Kitsap and a 1-0 loss to Kingston.
They lost in the first round of the West Central Districts tournament against Sumner 3-1.On the season, Sequim defeated first-place Olympic League finishers North Kitsap 3-1 on March 25 and held close with second place Kingston but lost twice 2-0 on March 24 and 1-0 on April 21.
They lost two games to Port Angeles (8-4 in league) early in the season in a non-league game and a league game but came from behind to win 3-2 on April 24.
Since then, Brasher said the boys have been “playing better and better.”Brasher said the Wolves never were outplayed but did play one or two bad halves in the early season.
“All the games were close,” he said.“That’s the beauty and curse of soccer with a goal here and a goal there. A goal at the start turns the whole game around.”
Regular season finale
To finish the season, the Wolves got to work early in the regular season finale with Eli Berg knocking in a penalty kick at nine minutes in.
Olympic responded 20 minutes later with the Trojans’ Makaleb McInnis scoring at 29 minutes on an assist from Carlos Ovalle to even the score.
Sequim’s Kyle Harrison responded less than a minute later after the Trojan’s goalie couldn’t contain a shot by Thomas Winfield and Harrison capitalized.Nine minutes into the second half, Winfield broke away on an assist from Cameron Chase to score and put Sequim up 3-1.
He almost had another goal less than a minute later but just missed. At 58 minutes, Cameron Chase kicked in a sliding goal for the 4-1 finish with Liam Harris recording the assist.
