RIDGEFIELD — For the second year in a row, the quarterfinal hurdle was a bit too high for the Ridgefield boys soccer team.
The Sehome Mariners scored five second-half goals on Saturday to beat the host Spudders 6-2, ending another successful season short of Ridgefield’s aspirations.
The team from Bellingham improved to 18-1-3 on the season and will take on Archbishop Murphy in the state semifinals on Friday at Sunset Chev Stadium in Sumner.
Ridgefield — which a season ago lost in the state quarterfinals at Fife — finished 17-3-1. The Spudders were 2A Greater St. Helens League and District 4 champions.
“It’s tough to see this in a positive way. But I still feel like we fought and gave it our all, and I don’t feel like we left anything in the tank,” Ridgefield senior Max Hauser said. “And I’m proud of our guys. I would love to advance but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”
It looked good for the Spudders when Hauser — who suffered a broken nose in an early-match collision — converted a penalty kick in first-half injury time to give Ridgefield a 2-1 lead.
But Sehome came out energized in the second half, tying the score from a corner-kick scramble in the 43rd minute and taking the lead on a well-taken free kick in the 51st minute. When substitute Danny Fazio won possession, dribbled into the penalty area and finished a nice shot to make it 4-2 midway through the second half, the Spudders hopes were dashed.
“We kind of have a game plan for that second half, thinking that we’re going to be one up for a bit. They come out and get that one real quick and it changes it a little bit,” Hauser said. “We tried to react. Props to Sehome. They’re a very good team. They have more than 11 good players and they all worked hard.”
Sehome’s biggest halftime adjustment was to get some fresh players up front.
“We kept putting in fresh legs and eventually wore them down,” Sehome coach John Sylvester said. “And we finished our shots and they didn’t finish their shots as well today as they could have.”
Ridgefield coach Brian Newman noted that the Mariners tacked on two late goals when the Spudders were forced to send extra players into the attack. Both coaches said the result likely would have been different had Ridgefield cashed in a couple of more of its first-half chances — including a couple of rebounds off the hands of starting goalkeeper Max Diehl.
“They’re a very good team,” Sylvester said of the Spudders. “If they had managed to score when we bobbled the ball once or twice, we would have lost the game.”
Ridgefield did strike first when sophomore defender Jonathan Flury cleanly headed home a Travis Gottsch corner kick in the eighth minute. That corner came after Diehl stopped a bicycle kick by Jason Osborn.
In the 13th minute a dangerous free kick produced a reboot the Spudders didn’t convert. On the resulting corner kick, Hauser thought he was going to finish a corner kick for a 2-0 lead.
“I thought I got the ball first and I was going to be able to get it in near post, but I guess (the defender) somehow got in front of it,” Hauser said. “Right when I snapped my head his head hit right into my nose. I heard a crack.”
With his nose broken, Hauser was on the sideline for a few minutes but was back in time to convert the penalty kick when Jason Osborn was knocked over from behind inside the penalty area just before halftime.
Sylvester drew a yellow card for running onto the field to protest the penalty call. The Sehome coach apologized after the game for that reaction. But he was thrilled with his players reaction in the second half.
“They were pushing (forward) some different players that were definitely quick and we weren’t prepared for them at first,” said Flury, a central defender for the Spudders. “We adjusted but they definitely came out with a lot more heart, definitely wanting it more than they did in the first half.”
The result was disappointing, of course. But a Spudders team that graduates only five seniors was not disappointed with the effort.
“I definitely think our whole team worked really good,” Flury said. “I’m not sad about how we played. The other team just played better.”
