WV girls soccer team shines

Katie Allen was in tears.

After three years on the West Valley High School girls soccer varsity, Allen and her teammates could feel their first state playoff game slipping away. The Eagles were down 2-0 in a shootout with East Valley-Yakima Tuesday at Smith Field in Millwood.

“I was bawling,” the senior laughed. “To come so close and see it slip away was too much.”

“I saw Katie crying, and I put my arm around her and told her it was OK, we could still come back,” senior Chelsey Corchaine said.

And come back they did.

Freshman goalkeeper Karina Carpenter smothered an East Valley shot, and the next two Red Devils each shot wide while Eagles Haley Bauman, Dee Dee Garbe and Krystal McCarthy all found the back of the net.

“You just don’t come back from being down 2-0 in a shootout like that,” coach Shelli Totton said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team come back from something like that.”

The playoff victory was a first for West Valley.

“Dirk Linton took a couple West Valley teams to the playoffs, but they lost their first-round games,” Totton said.

For the Eagles, the run to the playoffs has been especially sweet for the team’s four seniors: Allen, McCarthy, Bauman and Courchaine.

Until this season, West Valley was the smallest school in the Greater Spokane League, a league filled with large Class 4A school stocked full of players with high-level club experience.

“My sophomore year we got into the district (Class 3A) playoffs, and last year we had a pretty good season,” Bauman said. “But this has been special.”

The Eagles battled Great Northern League rival Cheney in a state quarterfinal playoff game Friday at Smith Field. The game was the fifth this season between the teams.

“It would be nice to play someone from the other side of the state,” McCarthy said. “But at this point, it’s just great to be playing anyone.

“But at the same time, we know Cheney, and we know what we have to do to beat them.”

Of course, beating Cheney hasn’t been easy.

“I think back and I have to say, I don’t remember beating Cheney in anything,” Bauman said.

Cheney won the first three meetings this season by identical 2-0 scores.

Last weekend, the Eagles broke the Blackhawk jinx by knocking them off, 1-0 in overtime, to capture the No. 1 seed from the Eastern Region, meaning the Eagles would host its first two playoff games – so long as they won the first game.

For the first-round state playoff game Tuesday, the Eagles played in front of their biggest crowd of the season.

“There hasn’t been a lot of attention paid to girls soccer, or any other girls sport for that matter, at West Valley for a long time,” Allen said. “To have a big crowd like we had was incredible.

“To walk through the halls and have people want to know how we’re doing and tell us that they’re going to be there for our game – that feels so incredible I can’t describe it.”

The four seniors feel good about the program for another reason.

“It feels so great to have this kind of a run at the end of our senior season,” Allen said. “What makes this feel even better is knowing that we’re leaving the program in really great hands.

“The young players on this team aren’t going to settle for not getting here. They’re going to know how to win.

“It makes me feel good knowing we can pass this along.”

Courchaine, who transferred to West Valley from Gonzaga Prep after her sophomore season, is especially pleased with the young hands the program will be in after this season.

“My sister, Kayla, is on this team, and I’m so proud of her and the other young players we have,” she said.

“Karina, our goalkeeper, has come in and done a fabulous job. We’ve all come to trust her and love her. Since she’s a freshman, we take turns taking her home.”