From the Sidelines

It looked like Spring but it didn’t feel like it yesterday while the Pirate boys soccer team was beating Chimacum 2-0.

The sun was out but the north wind felt just like winter, which the calendar said it still was for another day.

Elias Weston challenges a Chimacum defender.

But for the Cowboys’ goalkeeper Vashon could have won by five goals. The Chimacum keeper was fearless as he went one-on-one with everything the Pirates could muster.

Vashon’s scoring was almost perfectly balanced, a penalty shot by Nick Gass in the seventh minute and a beautiful shot by Michael Butz with just under seven minutes to play in the second half.

Gass was tripped from behind in the penalty box as he was about to shoot. He put the PK in the back of the net for what eventually proved to be the winning goal.

Seventy-three minutes is a long time to hold off a team that had won their first game a few days earlier, but the Pirate defense was up to the task.

In the dangerous final few minutes when a fluke goal could tie up a game Butz gave Vashon the insurance goal it needed. Coming out of a swarm of Cowboys just outside the 18-yard box, Butz unleashed a low hard shot from almost dead center a yard out from the penalty spot.

The win was the Pirates’ first and, more important, their first Nisqually League game. Today the varsity team goes to Eatonville for a non-league game.

Neither Chimacum nor Eatonville has enough players eligible for a JV game this week.

If it was cold at Vashon, the Pirate track teams must have experienced near-arctic weather at Eatonville yesterday. Both boys and girls finished third to Orting and host Eatonville, with Life Christian fourth.

Kate Straube won the 100-meter hurdles for the girls, the only Pirate first place.

On the boys side James Spencer won the 400, Aidan Cyra the 800, Colin Andrus the 1600 and Jack Summers the 300 hurdles.