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Bigfork girls still battling for first win

by Jordan Dawson Bigfork Eagle
| September 28, 2011 12:51 AM

 

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.”