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PHOTO BY ROCKY ROSS

TIGHT DEFENSE. Jessica Colburn, (9) a senior midfielder from Fife, fights for control of the ball against Kingston in a recent district tournament game.

The Defense Never Rests

Often overshadowed, the players whose job it is to make a mess of the opposition’s attack and prevent it from scoring a goal – the defenders – prove their worth over the long haul of a game and a season.

By Rick Walter

It is not always gorgeous. But it is always glorious. It brings the crowd to its feet with explosive exaltations of excitement followed by huge exhalations of relief.

It is a soccer goal.

Not just any soccer goal, but the soccer goal that breaks a scoreless tie and gives a team a 1-0 lead and allows that team to breathe a little easier, to play more aggressively and to increase its chances of a victory significantly.

The team that strikes first in a soccer match (according to organizations involved in high-quality soccer) will win more than 75 percent of the time.

But often overshadowed by the excitement of a big goal and the offensive forays that create them are the players whose job it is to lock things down on the other end – the defensive unit.

It is no oddity that the two highest-seeded teams from the Tacoma area in the state tournament this week, Bellarmine Prep in 4A and Fife in 2A, are tremendous misers when it comes to allowing goals.

Bellarmine, with a league record of 9-1-0, scored 37 goals while giving up a measly five.

No opponent scored more than one goal against the Lions – Olympia, Stadium, South Kitsap, Central Kitsap and Fife each managed one.

Fife, defending 2A champion, finished the regular season undefeated in league play and were 15-0-1 overall. The Trojans scored 68 goals and allowed one.

One goal in an entire season – that one goal coming back on Sept. 16 in a tie against Bellarmine Prep. It has been 900 minutes since this team has been scored upon.

“They are a very stingy group,” says Fife coach Teri Shimoda.

Ya think?

“They have such desire, such passion (to stop the other team from scoring).”

The attributes of such an elite defensive unit, says Shimoda, are speed, anticipation, communication and this desire.

“Part of it is pure athleticism, but those players on the defensive unit have to be smart. They have to recognize tendencies of the opposing forwards when they see them, they have to cover for one another and they have to make very quick decisions,” she says.

Fife’s defensive specialists are Gena Gaylord, Maloree Langdon, Kaylee Kramer and Shelby Hutton. One key to their tremendous success is their familiarity with one another and hence the communication Shimoda refers to. Three of the four girls (Gaylord, Langdon and Kramer) are seniors and have played together for several years.

Fife goalie Ryann Waldman, along with backup goalie Stephanie McFarland, gets a lot of credit for the shutouts.

Waldman, though, attributes the shutouts to the four defenders, as well as defensive tactics that bring as many as eight players down to defend opposing attacks.

She has made some picturesque saves this season, for sure, but there have been games where she could have relaxed into the lotus position and meditated for 80 minutes.

“If I am not getting any action down on my end, that’s a good thing,” says Waldman. “We have a very experienced team (12 seniors). Playing together, we’ve formed kind of a bond out there and communication is very important.”

If there is a chance that even a great defense will coast a little, it is usually in the middle of a game and against lower competition.

No worries, according to Fife’s players.

“We have been taking everybody’s best shot every game, because we have a target on our back as defending state champion. We never let up because we want to prove we deserve that title,” says senior forward Amanda Roselli, last year’s 2A state player of the year.

Most defensive fortifications are built around four defenders, and there are some variations on what their responsibilities are and what tactics they employ.

During the flow of a game, defenses often slide out of formation, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But normally you can find someone like Bellarmine’s Kelly Beck or Fife’s Jessica Colburn around the middle of the field, whose job it is toe poke, block tackle, hook slide and otherwise make life difficult for the opposing team’s attackers, keeping or taking the ball away from them.

“Kelly always goes for the extra touch. She is always sacrificing her body to win the ball. She plays with a lot of guts,” says Ciarra Pederson, senior goalkeeper and one of the Lions captains.

Beck, who as a freshman has to carry the ball bag after a game, relishes the job of playing midfielder for her team.

“We try to play an attacking style, and so that means always going for the ball, no matter what,” says Beck. “You want to win it every time.”

It’s not a glamorous job, but it often determines which team is running with the ball in attack mode. A second playmaking midfielder, in this case Bellarmine’s Claire Yearian, tries to get the offense rolling out of the midfield transition area. Between these two players – and their counterparts – often lies the rhythm of the game.

In a playoff game on Nov. 4 against No. 7 seed Thomas Jefferson, Lions defenders Kayla Russ, Lauren Bonck, Kaitlyn Pavlovich, Sarah Katterhagen and Sarah Hedglin had to contend with an underdog team that came out with a lot of energy. They were quicker getting to the ball and brought some early pressure. Putting down an early insurgency such as this is important because it is at the beginning and end of games when a lot of scoring is done.

“They had a couple of flurries, but I was very confident in our defense,” says Pederson.

Another of those flurries came at around the 20-minute mark of the second half, just after the Lions had scored and taken a 1-0 lead, when Yearian had bent a perfect corner kick, which was brilliantly headed over a well-positioned defense by Pavlovich.

Right after a team scores, it is often susceptible to a slight letdown. Sure enough, the TJs passed the ball into the Lions end rather easily and appeared to have some sightlines to the goal, but a fierce effort by the Lions defenders kept the shutout intact.

“It might have looked kind of chaotic, but it was under control. Our defenders were in great positions,” says Pederson. Something that brought maybe not the thunder reserved for a goal, but some respectable applause of appreciation.

After all, it’s only defense.

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