Wetherall's play keys Cardinals' soccer victory

The end of the string of girl’s soccer winless streak that stretches back to 2012 and some 40 games long, came Sept. 15 for the Medical Lake soccer team.

Freshman Nicole Wetherall played a huge part, or make that parts, in the Northeast A League contest.

Wetherall, who scored the first Cardinal goal in regulation at the 20 minute mark, stepped into the net to stop a few shots, and then scored the first of three shootout goals as Medical Lake defeated Colville 2-1. It was the first girl’s soccer victory for the Cards since a Sept. 20, 2012 win, 6-4 over Riverside. Jessica Laird and Jaxyn Farmen also scored for Medical Lake in the shootout.

Another freshman, Taylor Cannon, played the regulation portion of the game in goal versus Colville. “She’s new at it and has never played that position before,” Cardinals’ head coach Zane Higgins said. “She did an outstanding job for us.” Medical Lake outshot Colville 13-7 with Cannon making three saves.

For the shootout, however, Higgins inserted Wetherall in the net. “She’s had some experience playing goal before,” Higgins said. “She’s one of my goal scorers so you don’t want to put her in there during the game.”

Wetherall made two saves and another shot went wide. Colville did score twice.

“We played a very good game, they had about seven shots on goal,” Higgins said of his team against Colville. ”The defense pretty much shut them down.” Colville did have a pair of breakaways and scored on one.

Medical Lake followed that with a 6-0 loss at Deer Park Sept. 17. It was a game that was close in the beginning and throughout the first half where the Cardinals trailed just 2-0.

Higgins said his team played well in the early part of the contest and had three early shots, one off the post. “We could have easily been up in that game,” he said.

“We competed in the first half,” Higgins said. But he lost Farmen in the second half to injury. “We had a hard time stopping them (after that),” Higgins said.

Jessie Thomas scored three times and Riley Martinson twice for the Stags who improved to 2-0 in the NEA and 3-0 overall.

The Cardinals (1-1, 1-3) are on the road for a pair of games this week, this past Tuesday (Sept. 22) at Lakeside and today (Sept. 24) at Newport.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].