Soap Lake football presses on after loss to Waterville

While the Soap Lake High School football team has seen a couple of victories, it has struggled against league opponents and with injuries.

This season, the Eagles have an interesting mix of players. There are six seniors, five sophomores and 10 freshmen. No juniors turned out this year.

The number of young players on the team hasn’t been the only obstacle, head coach Tony Blankenship said players have experienced a lot of injuries this year so they are working to get back to full speed.

As of Sunday, the Eagles were 0-2 in the league and 2-3 overall. In the season so far, the team has seen victory over Pateros and Bridgeport, fallen to Sunnyside, Liberty Bell and Waterville, and Yakama Nation Tribal School had to forfeit its scheduled game.

The Eagles took on Waterville on Friday. Beforehand, Blankenship said “it should be a good one; we should be pretty evenly matched.” He mentioned the Eagles beat Waterville last season in a double overtime game.

While it might be a good match, Blankenship said Waterville’s players are bigger. He described his players as “very small, but we do things very well.”

Soap Lake lost the match against Waterville 20-72. Blankenship said it was a rough night with a lot of injuries.

Some Soap Lake players to keep an eye on, Blankenship said, include Diego Garza, Christian Foster, Alex Bustos and Pavlo Stoyan.

Some highlights from Friday’s game:

Diego Garza had 17 passes completed out of 33 for 284 total yards.

Pavlo Stoyan had four passes for 102 yards; Angel Rodriguez two passes for 25 yards; Gio Campos five passes for 60 yards; Curtis one pass for 15 yards; Josh Jipson one pass for 15 yards; Alex Bustos two passes for 7 yards; and Christian Foster 2 passes for 40 yards.

Christian Foster had five rushes for 21 total yards; Diego Garza had six rushes for 49 total yards; Alex Bustos had three rushes for 30 total yards; Steven Curtis had three rushes for 15 total yards; Robby Fisher had one rush for one total yard; Jiro Lopez had one rush for six total yards; and Josh Jipson had one rush for six total yards.

The Eagles take on Pateros at Soap Lake for the homecoming game Thursday.