Vals pick up season's first win

By JORDAN DAWSON / Bigfork Eagle

The Vals had their first win of the season Saturday against Frenchtown, 9-0, to end their three game losing streak.

"They played hard," said head girls soccer coach Hauna Trenerry. "They went to the ball."

Sophomore Caitlin Charlebois scored five of the team's nine goals. Quinci Paine, also a sophomore, scored three goals and assisted Charlebois with one of her goals. Freshman Miranda Miller made the first goal of her career while playing forward, a position she was playing for the first time.

"It was a good game because everyone got to play and we got to move some people around and see if they excelled in different positions," Trenerry said. "We have a couple of new options now and a couple of people got to play that had never gotten to play before."

Bigfork took 44 shots on goal to Frenchtown's one on the Vals, which accounted for Bigfork goalie Becca Denning's only save of the game. Frenchtown's Nelly Kinney and Aspen Ward had a combined 23 saves.

"The defense stopped a lot of shots and Becca had a great game," Trenerry said.

Offensively the Vals improved as well from their game earlier in the week against Whitefish, which they lost 2-1.

"We worked on using outside wings after the Whitefish game and they did a much better job of that against Frenchtown."

In last Thursday's game against Whitefish, Charlebois scored the team's only goal. Meredith Reed and Kelsey McCluskey each scored for Whitefish. Denning had 13 saves to Whitefish's Callie Marsh's six. Whitefish took 19 shots on Bigfork's goal. The Vals took seven.

Now with a win under their belt the Vals have proof of their improvement.

"This is Becca's first year as goalie," Trenerry said. "She's really stepped up. And Caitlin scoring in every game makes her a great forward to have."

But the Vals face tough competition this week. Tuesday they played Stevensville. Saturday they will take on Columbia Falls, a very familiar team to Trenerry, who played soccer there in high school and assistant coached there for three years. Her dad, Greg Trenerry, is the head coach for the Wild Cats. But Hauna doesn't seem too worried about the meeting. In some ways, she even has the upper hand having helped coach many of the Columbia Falls players.

"It's going to be a tough week for us," Trenerry said. "But just one game at a time I guess."