Ephrata girls soccer team opens 2017 season at Cascade

EPHRATA — The good news is, the Ephrata girls soccer team returns 10 of 11 starters. The bad news, it’s the same old CWAC and everybody is chasing Selah again in 2017.

The Tigers open the new season at Cascade on Tuesday and host Grandview on Thursday in the home opener.

Attitude is everything coach Hillary Coomes said, especially in a league where Selah is coming off a two-loss season where they scored 59 goals while giving up just 22 goals against. If the

Tigers want to break out of the middle of the CWAC pack, it’s going to be about attitude.

“The potential is there. We are good, but it all depends on their effort to become great,” she said. “It’s about what they’re willing to put into it. It’s about attitude and work ethic. Our league is going to come down to game day each and every time out. The ticket out of the middle of the pack is going to be work ethic.”

The Tigers return first-team all-league defender Sydnee Pixlee (jr.), along with second-team defender Sarai Kibby (sr.). They also return second-team selection Katelyn Owstrowski (sr) at the midfield and striker Mya Spencer (jr.), who was also a second-team all-league selection.

“I like this team. We’ve all played a lot together. We pretty much already know what we’re going to run, so we don’t have to spend a lot of time getting to know each other,” Spencer said. “One of the things I learned last year is that I need to communicate better. I made all the right runs up the field, but I needed to communicate more around the net.”

The Tigers also return honorable mention selection Bekah Schmuck at the striker position, but Coomes found success with a one-striker alignment last year and she’s going with four defenders and five midfielders again this season, leaving just one up top — Spencer.

“It’s a new formation that we implemented to go with the changes we made last year,” Coomes said. “It allows the forwards more freedom and more space to run into rather than the traditional formations we’ve used.”

The idea is to be more soccer-minded soccer players, she said. They’ll go with an experienced midfield with Kendall Kemp, Owstrowski and Kibby and push up to keep the pressure on and control the game flow. They can also attack with their outside mids out of this formation, which should give a lot of versatility.

“Our midfielders are very active on the offensive end,” Spencer said. “It gives us a chance to change the angles on the attack.”

The Tigers will open the 2017 season with freshman Renessa Cole in net and a talented group in the field to see if they can’t break out of the middle of the CWAC pack and contend for a league championship.

Rodney Harwood is a sports writer with the Columbia Basin Herald and can be reached at rharwood@columbiabasinherald.com