The No. 3 seeded Arcata Tigers kept their hopes of a first-ever North Coast Section championship alive with a comprehensive 6-0 win over Clear Lake in Saturday’s Division-1 girls soccer quarterfinals.
The Tigers overcame terrible field conditions, with the new Arcata field looking unplayable after the recent rains and a season of three teams practicing on it daily.
The Arcata girls prevailed despite the conditions and put together some nice passing moves with junior Alia Prentiss causing the Cardinals defense problems throughout.
Check out Arcata’s first half goals above …
Prentiss broke through their back line twice in the opening 10 minutes only to see the ball held up in the mud.
Fortunately for the home team, it didn’t matter and they quickly took control of the game with two Prentiss goals within three minutes.
The junior standout broke through the defense for both and slotted home with composure, and the home team led 2-0 at the break.
Prentis would add two more goals and an assist after the break, with teammates Zoe Macknicki and Maddy Conley each also scoring and assisting on a goal.
Sionna Khattab also had an assist in the win.
“They were moving the ball well and did a good job avoiding the big puddles,” said head coach Patrick Stranahan, who added that “Alia was on fire” and “Zoe was a workhorse in the middle.”
Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Action from Saturday’s playoff game.
According to Stranahan, the opposing coach said Presntis was “just fantastic.”
Gracie Townsend and Kyla Berman each also played well in midfield for the Tigers, while the back line of Khattab, Quinlyn Rush Copple, Sophia Grffin and Maile Russell was impressive holding the visitors’ attack in check.
“Our back line was staunch as always,” Stranahan said.
Terrible field conditions…well, blame the athletic department… not the weather…
H-DNL schools playing teams that are either incorrectly placed in a division or should never have qualified for playoffs to begin with…
…the product on the field is not competitive, it is H-DNL WOKE public education…where winning is everything, so lets play the weakest competitors in playoffs by not switching back to winter season soccer…
The positive is the field conditions, likely keeping the score 6-0 instead of double-digits to zero… coaches who praise this atmosphere of weak competition can’t legitimately reason the educational part of school sports…
…but hey, it was staunch defense, or the field was sloppy, or or or, etc… but never once read a coach comment about being unhappy, the unfortunate transgressions of NCS schools in H-DNL about the lack of playoff competition, and lack of opportunity for local teams to play better teams.
If travel was that bad for anyone or everyone, well…no one testified to that…
Likely is the fact that the Schools/Leagues that stayed in fall soccer all were fully aware they’d never win section championships, and thus WENT WOKE CULTURE to make students feel like winners…even if by staying-put which takes advantage of a watered down field of competition…
Personally, do not recognize the section champions as anything other than Woke School politics recipients… they beat nobodies…
If the field conditions are bad in the fall, what do you think they would be like in the winter?
I agree with you that the fall soccer sections are a joke, but what should the HDN schools do? If they moved to winter season they would be in their first week of practice. Have you looked outside this weekend? Who in their right mind would want to be practicing/playing games in this weather.
Rainy conditions is part and parcel to the game, look at the UK.
https://mastersoccermind.com/16-tricks-you-should-use-to-play-soccer-in-the-rain/
From the equatorial region.