PORT ANGELES — The Peninsula College women’s soccer team wasted little time taking leads in its three games at the NWAC Friendlies last weekend.
In fact, it only took the Pirates five minutes to tally their first score of the season, a goal by freshman Myu Ban, in a 2-0 win over Treasure Valley.
In the other two games, Peninsula scored its first goals in the 12th and 14th minutes.
That’s kind of the idea this season.
“Scoring goals as quickly as we can, you know, setting the bar high, I think is going to be the key to our success,” sophomore midfielder Brenda Torres said.
“Like, making sure teams know that we’re here to win and goal-hungry, and . . . just basically making sure teams know that they need to fear us.”
The Pirates haven’t settled in after one goal so far. The first one has simply been the opening salvo. In their three games combined, they put up a total of seven goals within the first 20 minutes.
“I feel like we’re going to be best at coming out early and putting a goal away early, and then just finding our rhythm earlier than other teams,” sophomore defender Tori Hagen said.
Peninsula coach Kanyon Anderson is more concerned about the Pirates remaining engaged from the beginning of the match through the end.
“Really, what that’s about is when you have control of a game, kind of exerting your control,” he said.
“Last year, we let teams hang around all the time.
“Part of it, too, was just not being too exited about the game.
“I thought last year’s team was good, and I liked that team, but we lacked some enthusiasm — come on, we only have 90 minutes.”
The Peninsula players, who play their first home game against North Idaho on Saturday, seem urgent to set the tone after a disappointing — by their standards — finish to 2014 when they lost to Everett 1-0 in the Northwest Athletic Conference championship game.
The loss snapped Peninsula’s streak of conference titles at two games.
“It was really sad. But I think it’s motivating for the sophomores. We’re all just like, ‘We’ve got to win the NWACs, we’ve got to win the NWACs,’” Hagen, who started as a freshman last season, said.
“And it’s better for the freshmen because I feel like they’re growing into more experienced players by us making them have to change their mindset so quickly.
“These kids, it’s like half of our team, so we’re like, ‘No, you’ve got to come with us, we’ve got to win the championship together.’”
Hagen, a center back, is the most experienced returner of an all-sophomore defense.
Karen Corral is the other starting center back.
“She now has stepped up a big bunch for this team,” goalkeeper Manaia Siania-Unutoa said of Corral.
“She’s talking a lot more, she can organize the defense well. She’s not afraid to tell the back line, like, [to] step, not to step, or she’ll just shut them down, like, you’re doing this wrong, you need to like fix it.
“And Tori, Tori’s great. She just complements Karen really well. I am comfortable with them, I trust them with everything.”
Joining Hagen and Corral on the defensive line are outside backs Michelle Whan, who has switched positions from the midfield, and speedy Kendall Howell.
Other defenders expected to see significant time are Cierra Hamilton, Coby Yoshimura and Bailie Zuber.
Sequim graduate Heidi Vereide also is listed as a defender, but she will redshirt, as will her former Wolves teammate Leslie Cisneros.
Behind those defenders will be Siania-Unutoa. The redshirt sophomore returns to a different scenario than last year, when Peninsula enjoyed the luxury of three experienced goalkeepers.
Behind Siania-Unutoa are freshmen Cicely Warnick and Port Townsend graduate Malia Henderson, who is expected to redshirt.
That means more responsibility will be put on Siania-Unutoa’s shoulders this season.
She likes the increased and consistent playing time, but admits to feeling increased and consistent pressure, from herself and her teammates.
“This year, I know it will pretty much be up to me, and I know the team knows it, too. They make it clear,” Siania-Unutoa said.
Part of that pressure stems from her teammates’ belief in her.
“Manaia can carry the whole team on her back, let me just tell you that,” Torres said.
“I think she’s going to do great stuff for us. A great leader and a great player..”
While sharing time with Kasie Lough and Emily Flinn last season, Siania-Unutoa recorded three of Peninsula’s 19 shutouts last season.
She only made 10 saves — rather, she only had to make 10 saves, thanks to the strong defense in front of her. (“Sometimes we wouldn’t even touch the ball and it [got] boring,” Siania-Unutoa said.)
That defense only allowed four goals, an NWAC record, all season in 2014. Two of those came in the Pirates’ two losses to Everett — their only losses of the season — another came in the semifinal win over Lane and the fourth came in a late-season tie with Bellevue.
Four goals.
Yet, the Pirates want to improve on that this year.
“That’s one of our goals. We said that we have to [allow] less than four goals this season,” Hagen said.
“I mean, we did it last year; I think we can do it this year, especially with the group that we have.”
Anderson isn’t necessarily going to hold them to that goal.
“If somebody would have told me before last year we were only going to give up four, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Anderson said.
“I suppose it’s possible. But there’s not a lot of room for improvement.”
Peninsula’s defense was so stout last year that it clearly overshadowed the offense, despite the offense scoring 80 goals (an average of 3.5 per game), which ranked second in the conference and was only nine goals less than were scored by the 2013 championship team.
Attacking center midfielder Bianca Andrade missed most of last season with an injured ankle, one of many midfielders affected by injury in 2014. (Another was Torres, an NWAC all-star selection in 2013, had to redshirt last year due to a knee injury.)
Andrade said the Pirates want to score more in 2015.
“We have a really creative offensive attack right now,” she said. “I know we can be really crazy with what we can do.”
C.J. Stetser, who led Peninsula with 10 goals as a freshman last year, will miss this season with an injury. She will redshirt.
Many of the Pirates’ top goal scorers are back, though, including Lexi Krieger, who had nine goals and led the team in scoring with 23 points; Tasha Inong, who scored eight goals, including the game-winner in the double-overtime semifinal win over Lane; and Paige Mahuka, who had eight goals.
Krieger and Mahuka already have three goals this season, while Inong has two.
Andrade and Torres will boost the attack — each scored one goal last weekend — as will a number of freshman.
Ellie Small, for one, buried two goals last weekend. She also had three assists. Fellow newcomers Ban, who is from Japan, and Bri Jackson-Vallente also scored for Peninsula.
“This year, we have better depth and more kids that are capable of scoring 15-20 goals on the season than we’ve ever had,” Anderson said.
“This could be honestly the best attacking corps that we’ve ever had.
“So I think we’ll be really fun to watch this year. And I’m pumped.”
Krieger, Inong and Mahuka are currently set up to start at forward. They will be challenged throughout the season by Small, Hoku Afong and Jackson-Vallente.
Even as an all-star on the 2013 team that didn’t have a loss or tie in NWAC competition — in other words, she’s Peninsula College royalty — Torres is finding a battle for playing time at the midfield.
“Every day at practice, everyone goes so hard,” she said.
“I felt it from the beginning, like, I cannot slack off because everyone is ready to go all the time.
“It’s kind of like a tryout every practice, I guess you could say. Every day you’re trying to work harder than everyone else, because that competition, you want to win that starting spot, you want to get the minutes.”
Included in the midfielder mix along with Andrade and Torres are returners Taylor Berg and Kennady Whitehead, who used a medical redshirt last year, Kai Mahuka, Ban and Kameryn Jury-Hale.
Making the NWAC championship game obviously is impressive, and last year’s title game appearance was the Pirates’ fourth straight, but the bar has been set so high that anything but a championship is a little disappointing.
Falling short has rejuvenated the Pirates’ motivation.
It also has given them a nemesis: the Everett Trojans.
Not only did the Trojans beat Peninsula in the title game, they also ended the Pirates’ two-year conference winning streak last September.
“So we are looking to demolish Everett,” Siania-Unutoa said. “We’re looking for them.
“Every single practice, we have a high intensity, and we’re just thinking that we’re going to play hard in every game, every practice and look to beat every team.
“Everett put that in our eyes. We don’t like them.”
Thanks to realignment by the NWAC during the offseason, are Pirates are now in the North Region with Everett. And they’ll get three shots at the Trojans, the first coming on the road Wednesday, Sept. 16.
As hard as losing in the championship game was, Anderson is thrilled with what it has done to this year’s team.
“It’s fun to not be on top for a while. It’s just awesome to not have all that pressure,” Anderson said.
“The motivation’s really high. This is probably the hungriest team that we’ve had in a while.
“Last year kind of drew that out of them.
“The sophomores know what they want, and so they have high expectations.”
Other teams in the North Region are Edmonds, Skagit Valley, Whatcom and Shoreline.
________
Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
