Wahluke girls off to 2-0 in league soccer

MATTAWA — The Wahluke girls, playing tough defense again, defeated Granger, 2-0, in soccer to start the South Central A Conference East 2-0, but coach Arthur DeVictoria is not saying much about it.

“It’s still early,” he said.

And DeVictoria knows that the top programs in the league in recent years have been Connell and Kiona-Benton. Playing those schools will tell him a lot more.

The Warriors will host Ki-Be this Thursday at 4 p.m. First they will travel to Warden today.

DeVictoria did say he has more girls in the program this year who know the game. Some of them played in junior high. Others have played in the back yard against their brothers.

Another bit of good news is that the Warriors are young. The two girls who have done the most damage to opponents are junior forward Liliana Celaya and freshman forward Celeste Lopez.

Those two combined for the first score in the 17th minute. After the Warriors won the ball at midfield, Lopez took a forward pass then fed the ball to Celaya for the goal.

Celaya scored the second goal in the 62nd minute off an assist by sophomore Elizabeth Bravo.

As usual, Celaya put a lot of pressure on the Granger goal. She took seven shots. Lopez had two.

The two goals aside, the teams were fairly evenly matched. Wahluke took 16 shots and Granger had 13.

“Granger took a lot of shots from far away,” DeVictoria said.

The other challenge Granger faced was junior goal keeper Brenda Nolasco of the Warriors. She rejected nine of Granger’s shots.

This was Wahluke’s third shutout victory in a row. The lone match the Warriors lost was a tight 2-0 non-league verdict against Highland. The Warriors are 4-1 for the season.