Men’s soccer competed for state championship titles this Memorial Day weekend in Sumner.
Friday evening, May 26, MTHS Hawks faced East Valley Yakima High School and played into overtime at 0-0 and lost in penalty kicks 11-10. The following day, on Saturday, the Hawks played the Cedarcrest Red Wolves in a close match that ended with a loss of 2-1. Overall this landed the Hawks fourth place in the WIAA 2A State Championships.
The unusually quick turnaround, just one day in between each game, was a challenge for the team.
Soccer coach George Dremousis said it can be “really hard to get [the players] in and motivated and refreshed.”
The Hawks competed with the Red Wolves earlier in the season and were defeated through penalty kicks, so the hope for Saturday’s match was high.
After a stalemate with a score of 0-0 during the first half of the game, senior center back Colin Cockbain scored the first goal of the game. As a defense player, he humbly called himself “pretty lucky” to score the goal. Dremousis said Cockbain had performed well during practices, which led him to the decision of moving him up as the go-to kicker in Saturday’s game.
For every game in the WIAA championships, a sportsmanship award is honored to a member on each team. Saturday’s game honored Cockbain.
According to Dremousis, the team was affected by the loss of three players due to “administrative issues.” One of these players was the team’s goalie, who was replaced by Cody Nickell, who Dremousis said “stepped up and did a great job” in the last four games.
However, the team powered through and it wasn’t until the last ten minutes when they “uncharacteristically fell apart,” Dremousis said. He added that in these last minutes there was “bad defense” and it was “very disappointing.”
The Red Wolves scored the winning goal with just a few minutes left on the clock.
“We were tired—we didn’t get a lot of rest and our muscles were sore,” Cockbain said.
Despite the goal made by the Red Wolves in the final few minutes, Cockbain expressed his pride in the team.
“[It’s] the furthest we’ve made it in a long time,” he said about the team.
The match wasn’t the close to the season that many had hoped for, but Dremousis remains hopeful for the upcoming year.
“[It was a] good season, just didn’t work out the last 10 minutes. We’ll be back next year,” Dremousis said.
