'Remodeling job' underway for Medical Lake soccer

For a relatively out of the way league, tucked away in the largely rural parts of far Eastern Washington, the Northeast A has become mighty tough when it comes to girls’ soccer.

Deer Park is the defending 1A state champions with plenty of additional horsepower coming from Freeman and Lakeside on a regular basis.

It’s Dan Collins’ challenge as he approaches his third season as head coach to try to make Medical Lake competitive in the NEA after a drought where since 2018 the program has but two wins.

The former longtime assistant to boys (and onetime girls) head coach Zane Higgins is slowly carving his own path. “We’re working on building this program and it just is taking some time,” Collins said.

“I adopted a lot of things Zane (Higgins) did in practice, but now I kind of move more towards my stuff,” Collins said. “I’m feeling more comfortable, but I’m still learning; I think we all always do.”

One of the new additions to the program was initiating summer conditioning, something that Collins thinks will be another building block in the rebuild.

As has often been the case with Cardinals’ soccer through the past several years, numbers continue to be possibly the number one hurdle to turning losses into wins.

“My numbers are down compared to where I thought they would be,” Collins said. “I thought I’d be in the 20s but we’re not quite there. I might end up with about 16.”

While a bit disappointed with quantity, Collins is happy with the quality.

Collins singled out couple of notable returnees from 2021 when the Cardinals ended up 0-12 in league and 0-15 overall. They are Hailey Cross and Mckenzie Hammel, both seniors and team captains. Hammel drew additional attention from Collins for her versatility. “She’s a keeper/defender/mid/wherever I want to put her.” he said.

Isabelle Rhoads is a third captain and one who has a couple of years of experience. Kylie White is another returnee.

On the younger side is sophomore Abby Fisher. “She was one of my starters last year as a freshman,” Collins said of one of the few players who are part of a club team that offers additional development opportunities.

The program has gotten some help from other sports, particularly basketball which has contributed a handful of players. Actually, one of them, Bailey Bahr, could possibly fill a huge role — keeper.

“She’s a sophomore and she approached me last year and said she wanted to want to play keeper,” said Collins who could hardly say no to anyone who wanted to guard the massive 24-foot buy 8-foot goal.

Two others, sophomore Chloe Parsons and newcomer Delaney Gunther are also possibilities for the net.

While, perhaps, not skilled in soccer, the athleticism that this group of hoops players have shown are very welcome, Collins said.

The gift of ability transmits itself to allow learning the game at, perhaps, a quicker pace. “I can definitely teach them how to play (soccer),” Collins said.

Collins, who played three years of high school soccer in Lewiston, Idaho before finishing at Oregon Episcopal School (“Where I blew out my knee.”) has taught math at Medical Lake High School for the past 17 years.

Paul Delaney is a retired Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at [email protected].