Medical Lake soccer tops Deer Park 1-0

Maybe the magic with Medical Lake's soccer team, besides Makayla Geiger, is playing with a short roster?

While head coach Zane Higgins might not want to have that as his strategy on a regular basis, he will certainly take the results it provided last week.

The Cardinals won a crucial Northeast A League contest over Deer Park, 1-0, Sept. 20 and followed that with a nonleague win the following day, 7-4 over 2B Northwest Christian.

In the process the Cardinals (4-1 NEA, 5-3 overall) tied the Stags for first place in the NEA as the first half of the season ended Sept. 27 at Lakeside (3-2, 4-2) and the second half starts today (Sept. 29) at Freeman (3-2, 4-3) beginning at 4 p.m.

"Deer Park, that was a great one, we didn't play our best game," Higgins said.

Geiger scored the game's lone goal at 59 minutes. She got a through ball on a pass from Jaxyn Farmen and went in on a breakaway, snapping a shot in on the far post.

Taylor Cannon came up big in goal, making 15 saves for Medical Lake. "We had some really close calls, some balls hitting the post," Higgins said. "Deer Park had a lot of chances, they were pressuring us."

The nice thing was the coach got to see new faces in the starting lineup as the Cardinals were missing players due to illness.

"Makayla (Geiger) was one of them," Higgins said. "She was sick and wasn't at 100 percent," and as such the Cardinals were having a hard time of keeping the play in the Stags' end. Freshman Jayda Noble was also out of the lineup.

Higgins said the team had yet to have a full lineup in any game, prior to the Northwest Christian contest.

"We did well, we played very well," Higgins said. "We possessed well, we created some good opportunities, and we finished well."

Geiger had a career afternoon versus the Crusaders, scoring four times and assisting on another goal. Noble had a goal and a pair of assists while Farmen and Nicole Weatheral each scored and had an assist.

Weatheral was in the lineup for the first time and came close a number of times to adding to her stats.

Medical Lake outshot NWC 20-10, but up 7-1, Higgins emptied the bench of junior varsity players and the Crusaders promptly scored three times in four minutes.

"That was good for them to get in and get (game) experience," Higgins said of the JV players.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].