Bigfork girls still battling for first win
Although midway through the season the
Valkyries soccer team is still without a win, head coach Charlie
Appleby said he is seeing improvement from his team.
On Thursday night the Bigfork girls
traveled to Polson to take on the Lady Pirates. The Vals were
defeated 3-0 in the Northwest A contest after trailing 1-0 at
halftime.
“The girls played really well,” Appleby
said of the Vals. “It was probably the best they have played
individually and as a team. They really started to put on some
offensive pressure, but we need to finish. We have to learn to
finish.”
After weeks of dealing with girls
missing games for a variety of reasons, Appleby had a full roster
Thursday.
“I got to see every single girl play,”
he said. “We had a full team for the first time. So everyone got to
get into the game and play, which is really nice.”
However, that scene was cut short when
goal keeper Jazzmyn Musser had to come out of the game at halftime
due to an ankle injury she incurred during warm ups. Alexandra
Dillon, who served as Bigfork’s keeper last year, stepped into the
net in her place in the second half.
Musser was credited with three saves
and Dillon had six.
Bigfork took four shots on Polson’s
goal. The Lady Pirates took 23 shots on the Vals’ goal. Their
keeper, Monica Cleveland, had five saves.
“We’re hitting cross bars, we’re
hitting the side of the bars, we have keepers that are getting
great saves,” Appleby said of his team’s scoring attempts. “I think
we’re shooting a little early. I’d like to see them get one more
pass in before they shoot, but that comes with time and learning to
trust each other. We’re close though and we’re pushing, but we need
to keep pushing. I think part of it is that we have sort of a
mental block about it because we haven’t done it so we’re not sure
we can do it. The girls who used to be big scorers for us moved on
last year and now we need to get the other girls to the point where
they’re comfortable taking on those roles. They just haven’t had
their ‘ah-ha’ moment yet.”
Although the current season is in a
discouraging state as far as the win-loss record is concerned,
things are looking up in the big picture.
“We have been moving girls around a lot
and that’s been really hard on them,” Appleby said. “I think as a
coaching team we have everyone pretty much where we want them to
be. That seems really late in the season, but it will likely stay
the same next year and we’ll just fill in for the seniors.”
Next up
The Valkyies played at Stillwater
Christian School on Tuesday. The results of that game will be in
next week’s Eagle.
On Saturday the Bigfork girls host
Whitefish at 2 p.m. at Carlyle Johnson Field for their Homecoming
game.
“I’m looking forward to playing
Whitefish again,” Appleby said. “It’s another one of those
measuring stick things. The first time we played Columbia Falls we
allowed them to score five goals in the first half and the second
time we only allowed one goal in the first half. The first time we
played Whitefish we played away and we don’t really play well in
Whitefish, which I’m not really sure why but we don’t. Now we’ve
had a little more experience and we will have had a little more
rest leading up to this game, so it will be good to see how we’ve
improved. Also, we will hopefully have all of our starters healthy
for this game and we didn’t for our last.”