A quiet first half gave way to an eventful second half that saw West Valley fall a bit short of a win over a Cook Inlet Conference team Saturday. The Wolfpack boys lost to Dimond 3-2, falling behind 2-0 early in the second half after the match was scoreless at halftime, and then coming back to tie the match momentarily.
In a couple of efforts to keep Dimond off the scoreboard early on, West Valley junior defender Quinn Willis deflected the ball out of bounds near his own goal in the opening minutes, and senior goalkeeper Ryder Marshall later tipped the ball up to himself to secure a save.
After a scoreless first half, Dimond junior Jared Mateaki scored minutes into the second half. He then doubled the Lynx’s lead on a penalty kick shortly after to give the visitors a sudden two-score advantage.
West Valley scored a goal on a rebound by junior Koen Aitken, and another score came with help from Dimond five minutes later on an own goal.
However, Mateaki cemented a hat trick later in the second half, and West Valley’s late efforts to tie the match came up empty.
“We continue to shoot ourselves in the foot a little bit,” West Valley first-year head coach Damon Crutcher said postgame. “We’re doing a great job of possessing the ball and keeping it on their half of the field.
“We just have silly turnovers that end up resulting in goals for them. I like that we answered back today. We’ve had a little bit of struggles scoring this year, so it was nice that we answered with goals ourselves. We had plenty of opportunities to win it, just couldn’t get lucky enough.”
West Valley is now 2-3 overall after a pair of weekend matches against Anchorage teams. The Wolfpack defeated Bartlett 15-0 on Friday. Dimond improved to 5-2 with the 3-2 victory over West Valley and a 3-0 win over Lathrop on Friday.
West Valley’s next game is on Tuesday, April 29 against Monroe Catholic at 7:30 p.m.
“We’re still trying to build,” Crutcher said. “We graduated quite a bit last year, and they’re trying to buy into my philosophies and how I want them to play ball. So it’s a growing process. The season’s not long, but at the same time it is long. We’ve got a lot of games coming up, we’ve got a lot of time to practice and get ready for hopefully State.”
The West Valley girls fell to 2-2-1 overall after a scoreless tie against Bartlett on Friday and a 6-0 loss to Dimond, the undefeated defending state champion, on Saturday. The West Valley girls also play Monroe Catholic next Tuesday, at 5:30 p.m.
Contact Gavin Struve at gstruve@newsminer.com or 907-459-7544
