Wave sophomore Caitlyn Welch, right, races to regain possession against the Vaqueros offense.
Even with several injuries to valuable players, the Greenwave varsity girls soccer team is showing few signs of slowing down and has been on a winning streak continued by their home match win against Fernley on Wednesday, 8-0.
The Lady Wave is currently at 6-4-1 overall and 4-2-1 in league play, while the Vaqueros are now 0-9-1 overall and 0-6-1 in league play. The Wave’s next home match will be against Dayton Saturday at 10 a.m.
From an outside perspective the game began a bit slow, between the onset of the cold weather and two teams struggling to gain speed. But it wasn’t long before Wave senior Rebecca Mills put Fallon on the board with their first goal with six minutes into the first half.
“We did really good,” Mills said after the match. “We definitely had a lot of good free balls, but we definitely need to work on our passing a little bit more and pick it up again like we did. Last weekend was really good passing wise. Today we’ve got a lot of girls who were injured and hurting, so we’re kind of just taking it easy this week.”
The Wave’s version of “taking it easy” only seemed to show in charging speed and passing, since the Vaqueros could only match their offense in terms of speed, and even then had to sacrifice some stability to their defensive clusters. It was only 10 minutes later that this led to the Wave’s second goal being knocked in by one of Fernley’s own players by mistake.
Despite being spread out unevenly, the Vaqueros managed to stave off the Wave for a decent few minutes in the first half until Wave junior Melinda Fagundes charged down the left side, through the center and scored for the third point.
The Vaqueros wouldn’t go without shots on goal for long though, but Wave junior Kyndra Leary, who is normally a midfielder but was playing goalkeeper this match, was able to shutout Fernley.
According to Mills, like Leary, several of the Wave girls were playing different positions than normal today. This according to her was to begin preparing for when a few members of the team that are a part of the FFA head to nationals in a few weeks.
One of these players was sophomore Sierra Hickox, who was always quick to regain possession after the Wave girls scored and was one of the consistently fastest players in the match even while sprinting down the far line. Hickox spent the match nimbly blocking and retrieving possession from a lot of the stronger Fernley players, and was one of the really strong defenders of the match according to Mills. “She was playing completely new positions to her today,” Mills said, “and she rocked them. She absolutely rocked them.”
Mills also cited senior Maria Garcia, who was also consistently aggressive throughout both halves.
“She came out and she played so well,” Mills said. “I’m so impressed with her.”
The second half had a slower start than the first, not in terms of speed or aggression, but mainly in scoring since the Vaqueros were initially much tighter in their defensive line, wanting to hold the Wave from gaining too many breakaways.
This would only last six minutes until Wave senior Kailey Davis broke through the middle and scored the fourth point with a high kick that went just above the Fernley goalkeeper’s reach. Not enough for her, though, since within a literal minute Davis scrambled for possession against several Vaqueros, broke through the middle again, and scored her second goal of the match in the same high kick.
This was the true turning point for the game, since from then on the Vaqueros were slow on the few charges they had and could not get the ball out of their own territory for too long with the Wave’s well spread offensive line.
With 20 minutes still left in the half, Wave senior Brittany Wallace scored her first goal of the game and the Wave’s sixth, with help from senior Macy Meyers who had a strong passing and charging. “We have a lot of really strong girls in the center helping us out,” Mills said commenting on Meyers and several others. “Macy is one of our strongest forwards up there, works her butt off.”
While the Wave kept possession for a decent amount of time, the Vaqueros did achieve two impressive breakaways down the left side, with two shots on goal within three minutes, both blocked by Leary who was swapped with regular goalkeeper junior Kayce Mulder.
Mulder, playing midfield and forward today, had several shots on goal throughout the match, including three attempts on goal until she finally got around the Fernley goalkeeper and scored the Wave’s seventh point with an angled kick from the left side of the post at 12:49 left. Everyone on the sidelines was happy to see Mulder’s persistence pay off, but none was happier than Mulder herself, running back from the post with a laugh and a smile as she called out to her mom that she finally scored.
The match ended 8-0 after one last goal from Fallon with three minutes left and the highest scoring victory for Fallon in the season thus far.
Despite the score, Mills still insisted that there was still room for improvement, playfully pointing out that scoring and taking it easy “don’t entirely correlate all the time.”
“We kept good possession,” Mills said, “and we really wanted to work on possession and passing. With the possession and passing that we had at the end though, we ended up with our goals, which is good.”