The majority of Friday’s WesCo North matchup between Oak Harbor and Arlington was more like a track meet than a soccer game.
Much of the action was played at midfield and for the first 60 minutes, neither team was able to put sustained pressure on the opponent’s goal.
At the 32-minute mark of the first half a shot by Oak Harbor’s Mike Johnston deflected off an Arlington defender and into the net, and the Wildcats made the score stand up for a 1-0 victory.
“Our goal keeper played courageous tonight,” said Oak Harbor coach Steve Barker. “He is the player of the game.”
During the first half and for the first 20 minutes of the second half there was a lot of back and fourth action by both teams.
The Wildcats outshot the Eagles 5 to 4 in the first half but in the final 20 minutes of the game, Arlington began putting pressure on Oak Harbor’s net.
The Eagles had several opportunities to tie the score on point-blank shots, but senior goal keeper Zach Koeller was up to the task and kept the Wildcats in the lead.
“My team really, really helped out,” he said. “They did an amazing job tonight. Well, well done and a great improvement from the last game. We got that lucky goal in the first half on a good shot by Mike and we got the deflection. Then we shut them off for the rest of the game.”
In the second half Arlington had 16 shots on goal, several of them coming off corner kicks.
“It was great to get the win tonight,” Barker said. “We got the ball in the net and we had several other chances, but it was our goal keeper who won it for us. He played a tremendous last 20 minutes and he saved us about five times. I’m glad he came out.”
With 15 minutes remaining in the game, Koeller swatted away a header off a corner kick that appeared to be destined for the upper half of the net and about three minutes later, he gathered in a wicked shot by Arlington’s Oscar Martinez from in front of the net to save another potential goal.
“I did what I could and I just do what a gotta do,” Koeller said.
For the game, he made 14 saves.
“We played much better tonight,” Barker said. “We still have a lot of things we need to work on, but we’ll be there by the end.”
The Wildcats play at Snohomish Thursday and return to Memorial Stadium to face Everett in a 1 p.m. game on Saturday.
