The Highlanders endured three loser-out games in just five days to qualify for the 3A state playoffs, defeating Prairie, Capital and Shelton in the District 3/4 tournament.

“There is a lot of pressure playing one loser out game,” Hazen head coach Ken Matthews said in a news release. “Imagine what the guys have been going through playing three in five days. It wasn’t easy but they got to ‘The Dance.’”

Hazen drew a first-round matchup against Interlake, a team they lost to 5-0 in a nonleague game at the very beginning of the season.

Matthews predicted the Highlanders would give the Saints a much better game in the May 19 rematch, and he was certainly right.

“Hazen was sharp all over the field,” Matthews said. “Defensively they were outstanding, holding the KingCo goal scoring leader, Jason Rodriguez, off the sheet.”

Still, Interlake, who went on to win the 3A state soccer title, defeated Hazen, 1-0, that night.

“Sometimes in sports you hear the best team didn’t win,” Matthews said. “I don’t know about that, but I will say a very good soccer team didn’t win tonight.”

Liberty

The Liberty boys soccer team made it to the state’s 2A quarterfinals before losing to eventual state champion Archbishop Murphy.

After an opening-round win in the District 2/3 2A tournament, the Patriots immediately guaranteed themselves a spot in the district title game and a state berth.

The team was a bit short-handed for its May 16 district championship game.

That’s because a handful of players traded their kits for tuxes, as the school celebrated its senior prom that night.

“We were missing like five guys,” Liberty coach Darren Tremblay said. “So, we thought, ‘Oh boy, it could be a long night.’”

It was a long night, but not for the Patriots. Liberty defeated Tyee, 3-0, to win the Class 2A District 2/3 title and secure a No. 1 seed into the state playoffs.

They then defeated Anacortes May 19 in a match that came down to penalty kicks, before losing to Archbishop Murphy.

Not more than a dozen students made the very short trip to Liberty High School March 19, where their boys soccer team took on the rival Patriots.

Even with their lack of numbers, the cheers that emanated from the section after the game ended in a 2-1 Hazen victory were deafening.

While the Highlanders celebrated the big nonleague win over its Renton rivals, for Liberty, it was just another match.

“They’re our rivals, they’re across town, but it’s just a preseason game,” senior midfielder Tyler Jensen said. “We’re all just having fun out here.”

By Greg Farrar
Zach Quensel (center), Hazen High School junior forward, celebrates his first-period goal with teammates Robbie Schroeder (18) and Reyes Garcia in their March 19 match against Liberty.

Hazen appeared to have the upper hand for most of the first half, controlling ball possession for the majority. But it took some time for the Highlanders to find the net, despite a few good looks.

Junior forward Zach Quensel scored the game’s first goal in the 28th minute, giving Hazen a 1-0 lead as the teams headed into halftime.

When the squads returned to the pitch for the second half, the Patriots wasted no time in evening the score.

Jensen picked up an assist after connecting with junior Bradley Jarvis in the 43rd minute.

“I didn’t even know who scored until I got back here,” Jensen said. “I just saw a scramble, ball went in the goal and that’s all I could see from my point.”

As the game went on, the pace and play made it seem like this one was headed to a draw, but Hazen’s Reyes Garcia had other plans.

With an assist from teammate Drew Wilson, a Hazen freshman, Garcia scored what would be the winning goal in the 59th minute.

“I saw the ball and I said, ‘I’m going to take the ball, I’m going to win it,’” Garcia said. “It doesn’t matter how tall they are, I’m going to win it.”

It wasn’t just another game for Hazen, Garcia said. His team relished the experience of defeating their neighbors, even if it was a nonleague game.

By Greg Farrar
Drew Wilson, Hazen High School freshman midfielder, and Liberty senior midfielder Tyler Jensen vie for the ball during the second period of their March 19 soccer match.

“It means a lot,” Garcia said. “Hazen and Liberty, we’re big-time rivals, and we knew that this was one of the top teams last year in KingCo.”

With a tough KingCo 3A/2A Conference to traverse, Jensen added that Liberty will learn from the loss and simply look ahead to the next game.

Expectations are high for the Patriots, as noted in the team’s early-season ranking as the No. 5 team in the state at 2A, according to The Seattle Times.

This year’s Liberty squad has a lot of talent, Jensen said, but it must fill a big hole with the loss of graduated superstar Colton Ronk, now playing at Highline Community College.

“It’s a big void to replace, but we’ve got a lot of people stepping up,” Jensen said. “We’ve got Nate Steenis, Leoul Hancock and Ryan Graham moved up from defense. A lot of guys are putting in work in the middle.”

You won’t find Hazen’s name among the ranked, but that doesn’t deter this close-knit team from working their tails off to reach their goal of qualifying for state, Garcia said.

“This team is all about chemistry,” he said. “We’re family here at Hazen, and as long as we stick together, sky’s the limit.”

By Greg Farrar
Jordan Hemmen (14), Liberty High School junior defender, watches her header score the first point for the Patriots in a 7-0 win Sept. 9 over Hazen High School.

If it were a football game being played at Liberty High School on Sept. 9, the 7-0 shutout win for the home team would have told the story of a mostly defensive stalemate between two squads.

But Liberty and Hazen were not playing football that pleasant Tuesday evening; they were playing soccer. So, instead, that rare 7-0 score engineered by the Patriots told the opposite story — one that ends with an overpowering offensive performance courtesy of the defending 3A state champions, now playing at the 2A level.

“It’s so much fun when you’re scoring — and then you just keep scoring,” said junior captain Jordan Hemmen, who accounted for two of Liberty’s seven scores.

Things started out slow for the Patriots, a squad looking to replace 10 seniors from last year’s championship team. They didn’t find the net until about 25 minutes into the first half.

It came on a corner kick from senior Sami Harrell, who perfectly served the ball to Hemmen, giving her the chance to head the ball in for her first score of the night.

From there, Liberty got on a roll and never looked back.

“The floodgates kind of opened and once we got one, they kind of just went boom, boom, boom,” Patriots coach Tami Nguyen said.

The second score came not two minutes later, when freshman Sydney Willoughby found the net, courtesy of yet another Harrell assist.

Just 5 minutes before the end of the first half, the Patriots showed the future is bright, when a pair of freshman worked together to net Liberty’s third goal of the night. Makena Carr had the score, while Willoughby had the assist.

“I’m super excited to see the freshmen develop the next few years,” Hemmen said. “They have so much potential.”

Liberty scored two more times before the end of the half, as Hemmen added her second goal and senior Megan Downing had her first, while Sydney Abel engineered assists for both.

Kelley Johnson and Abel put the game even farther out of reach in the second half, when they each scored a goal.

“Early in the year, just for our attacking players to get confidence scoring goals is huge for us,” Nguyen said.

Freshman goalkeeper Sydney Argosino and junior Jasmine Curl combined for the shutout.

Nguyen said her squad was still finding its identity in the season’s infancy. The goal is to repeat as state champions, this time at the 2A level, but that was not necessarily on her girls’ mind at the moment, she added.

The coach, who starred at the University of Washington, is a big proponent of making sure her team plays its best at the right time, just as last year’s squad did, coming together for a thrilling playoff run.

“Obviously, state’s a goal of ours, but we just take it one game at a time,” she said.

Sept. 9 represented the first time Liberty and Hazen faced off on the soccer pitch in 10 years. It was a rough night for the Highlanders, but Hazen coach Ken Matthews still found a few positive takeaways from the game.

“I am never disappointed in our girls’ effort,” he said. “They give everything that they possibly can.”

Similar to Liberty, Hazen lost a large senior class to graduation, including star defender Gabby Brower, a Newcastle resident now playing at Western Washington University.

Hazen played one of the toughest nonconference schedules in the state. In addition to facing the defending 3A state champions, they traveled to Idaho where they played Lake City High School, a team that earned third place in its state tournament last year.

The Highlanders also played Auburn Mountainview and Eastside Catholic, teams from two historically strong programs. The tough nonleague schedule was intentional, Matthews said.

“Our goal is to be better in league, to get through league, so playing teams like this can only help,” he said. “I’ll be able to say to these girls, ‘I don’t think these guys are going to be better than anyone we’ve already played.’”

Ronk, a now-graduated senior, was named to the Washington State Soccer Coaches Association All-State 2014 Spring Soccer First Team.

The midfielder was a key reason the Patriots won the KingCo 3A/2A regular-season soccer title for the second straight year. Ronk recorded nine goals and seven assists for Liberty. He’ll continue his career at Highline College.

Hazen’s sophomore defender Hector Cervantes was named to the Second Team. Cervantes was the only underclassman in the 3A classification to make the list.

“Congratulations to our Hector Cervantes for making second team as defender,” Hazen coach Ken Matthews wrote in an email. “Hector is one of the guys Hazen can be proud of — he has a 3.35 GPA, I don’t write too many detentions for him and from what I hear, a pretty solid citizen in the classroom.”

The postseason accolades continue to pileup for Liberty High School senior soccer player Colton Ronk.

The midfielder was a key reason the Patriots won the KingCo 3A/2A regular-season title for the second straight year. Ronk recorded nine goals and seven assists for Liberty.

Coaches across the league recognized that, voting him the KingCo 3A/2A league’s Most Valuable Player.

Ronk was also named to The Seattle Times’ All-Area team. He’ll play at Highline Community College next fall.

By Greg Farrar
Sam Bunnell (20), now a Liberty High School soccer coach, plays in 2011 during his Hazen High School sophomore year against Liberty’s Nick Turner.

Sam Bunnell, Liberty High School’s new assistant soccer coach, is no stranger to the school’s turf field.

In fact, he’s played on it quite recently. He just wasn’t playing for the home team at the time.

Bunnell suited up for the rival Hazen Highlanders, where just last year he starred on a team that won the Seamount League championship and earned a state tournament berth.

Shortly after, the 2013 Hazen graduate earned a slew of postseason accolades anointing him as one of the best soccer players in the state.

“That was a fun team,” he said of the 2013 Highlanders. “Really, we just did it all for each other. We’re all really good friends and we treat each other like family. It was amazing to go out like that for everyone, not just me.”

A year later, he now roams the sideline of the “enemy” as an assistant with the Patriots, but despite some early razzing from former teammates, Bunnell said it’s been a smooth transition.

After graduation, Bunnell starred for a semester on the Southern Virginia University soccer team earlier this year, before returning home to Newcastle in anticipation of a two-year mission for his church.

He came back to look for work and earn money for his mission, which is how he found the Liberty opening. Hazen soccer coach Ken Matthews even served as one of his references for the opening.

“All my former Hazen teammates know I’m at Liberty now,” he said. “At first, I mean obviously there is a bit of joking around, but they’re all happy for me. Ken said he was glad I was doing it.”

Bunnell is the head coach of Liberty’s C-team and also offers extensive support to the varsity and junior varsity teams.

It’s harder, he said, standing on the sidelines, rather than suiting up and getting in on the action on the field.

“It’s tough to transition from the field to the bench, but it’s cool to be the mentor instead of the mentee,” he said. “I’m able to train these guys and groom these guys and help them develop into the players they’re going to be.”

He’s not the type of coach that is hard on his players, and he doesn’t yell during games, Bunnell said, but he does make sure that he keeps his team moving during practice.

Bunnell models some of his teaching techniques after his former Hazen soccer coach, he said.

“One of the biggest things I’ve taken from Ken, and there have been a lot of things, but the main thing is his pregame warm-up, and the reason I took that was because we started a certain tradition last year with our warm-ups and we didn’t lose with them,” he said.

Prior to the first practice, Bunnell expected to catch some grief from his players because of his Hazen roots. It’s been nothing but smooth sailing, though, and the Liberty athletes treat him just like any other coach.

Liberty head coach Darren Tremblay said that so far, Bunnell fits right in with the staff and has been a great addition.

“Sam was the most qualified of the applicants,” he said. “He’s young, but he’s real mature for his age, and he’s a great player, we know that. He just loves the game.”

Bunnell plans to return to college after his mission, and continue his collegiate soccer career. In the meantime, he’s keeping his own skills sharp while playing for Inter United Football Club, a semi-professional team based in Tukwila.

“It’s been fun playing at a different kind of level,” he said of the experience. “The play is a little bit different than college and definitely a lot different than high school.”

The NSCAA’s National Diploma is an advanced-level, 45-hour course for experienced coaches. The course stresses technical and tactical knowledge and includes sessions about the teaching process, psychological skills training and laws of the game.

The overall objective of the National Diploma is to acquaint coaches with the needs of soccer players and provide an organized and progressive methodology of coaching those needs.

“This course provides a way for us to structure practice sessions in a better way to improve our technical and tactical play,” Matthews said in a statement. “All the coaches were so into the course. There were positives everywhere.”

Hazen soccer standouts Gabby Brower and Chelsea Delgado will play the sport in college after leading this year’s team to its first outright Seamount League title since 1992, and a state tournament appearance.

Brower will play at Western Washington University, while Delgado will suit up at Bellevue College.

Contributed
Hazen High School athletes (from left) Chelsea Delgado, Quadir Griffin and Gabby Brower signed to colleges Feb. 5.

Hazen football standouts Joe Glaefke and Quadir Griffin will also continue their athletic careers in college. The all-league performers will both play at Everett Junior College.

“These four individuals have made significant contributions to Hazen High School,” Hazen Principal Randy Taylor said in a statement. “We are proud of them.”

No Liberty High School athletes signed national letters of intent on signing day, Feb. 5, to his knowledge, Stark Porter, the school’s athletic director, said.

There are a handful of athletes, however, who plan to continue their careers at the next level.

Aaron Bowe, who led the boys cross-country team to its first state appearance this year, will compete at Gonzaga University.

Hannah van Amen, a member of the state championship soccer team, will continue her career at Saint Martin’s University.

Chase Vanek will play baseball at Clark College, while Lorin Archibald will take to the diamond at Lower Columbia College.

By Greg Farrar
Liberty High School players and coach Tami Nguyen (left) squeal in delight over their trophy after the Patriots won the state 3A girls soccer championship, 2-1, against the Kamiakin Braves in Puyallup Nov. 23.

As time wound down and the Liberty High School girls soccer team secured a 2-1 victory over Kamiakin in the Nov. 23 3A state championship game, two things were certain.

First, the Patriots would capture their first state title in girls soccer; and second, the team, which had sworn off fast food this season, would feast on McDonald’s that night.

“If I was really on it, I would have had Happy Meals delivered,” Liberty coach Tami Nguyen joked.

A trip to Ronald’s was undoubtedly deserved for a group that made school history, riding a wave of momentum that began with the team’s Nov. 13 upset of top-ranked Columbia River.

The 2013 Patriots didn’t even win their own league championship, which went to Bellevue, but they won the only trophy that mattered.

“People always talk about peaking at the right time, and I don’t think you could’ve scripted it any better than this,” Nguyen said.

The sizable contingent of Liberty fans didn’t have a chance to get settled in at Sparks Stadium in Puyallup before the Patriots scored their first goal against Kamiakin.

Just seconds into the game, Liberty sophomore Sydney Abel put the Patriots on the board, netting the ball inside the right post, with an assist from junior Sami Harrell.

“She played me a good ball and I just had to be there to finish it, and our momentum went up right as we got it,” Abel said.

Kamiakin tied it up in the game’s 16th minute, sending the teams into halftime with a 1-1 score.

Abel and Harrell would connect again in the second half, only this time Harrell had the score, while Abel had the assist. The goal was all the Patriots would need to capture the state title.

When the referee blew the whistle, officially ending the game, the Patriots jumped and screamed with excitement, while echoes of the chant “Patriot power” emanated through the stands.

“We didn’t think we were going to win it this year, and we did it,” Harrell said.

The win against Columbia River was a momentous turning point in the Patriots’ season, Nguyen said.

It instilled confidence and a belief that Liberty really could make it to the top, after coming so close the past few years. In 2012, the Patriots placed fourth at state; a year earlier, they finished second.

“It’s unbelievable for the seniors, for our school,” Abel said. “We came back and won it.”

Liberty reached the title game after a close victory against Seattle Prep in the semifinals. That Nov. 22 game went to a shootout.

Ten seniors will graduate from this year’s Liberty squad, a special group that was defined by their close relationships, Nguyen said.

“Their leadership of getting the underclassmen on board and teaching the tradition of our program has been important,” she said. “They’ve really taken those guys under their wing, which really instilled a good team atmosphere for us.”

Hazen wins Seamount League championship

It was a year of milestones for the Hazen girls soccer team.

The Highlanders captured the Seamount League title outright for the first time since 1992, and earned their first victory against Kennedy Catholic since 1999.

“We don’t really talk much about last year’s co-championship, but this one is our real own championship, the first at Hazen girls’ soccer since 1992,” Hazen coach Ken Matthews said in a statement.

The Highlanders continued breaking down long-standing records when they punched their ticket to the state tournament for the first time since 1993.

Hazen made it to state with a 1-0 victory against Prairie on Nov. 9. Scoring and shooting were a rare commodity for both teams, but a penalty kick by senior Gabby Brower at the 30th minute was enough for the win.

Brower, a team captain, is a Newport Hills resident and will continue her soccer career at Western Washington University next year.

The Highlanders’ season came to an end Nov. 13, after a 4-1 opening-round loss to Seattle Prep.

Hazen was in the game with 15 minutes to go after senior Chelsea Delgado scored off Melissa Carney’s assist to cut Seattle Prep’s lead to 2-1. Seattle Prep scored two late goals to put the game out of reach, though.

Hazen will see eight seniors graduate from this year’s team, Matthews said.

“There are no words I can come up with right now to adequately describe what this class has meant to our soccer program,” he said.

The Highlanders dominated the Seamount all-league honors this year. Hazen earned the league’s Sportsmanship Award, while Matthews was honored as Coach of the Year.

The Hazen High School soccer team did not have their best stuff as state tournament play opened on May 15, but it was just good enough to defeat Mountain View, 3-2.

Senior midfielder Casey Guay put Hazen on the board first, scoring a quick goal, just four minutes into the game.

The lead would be short-lived, because just three minutes later, Mountain View responded with a goal of their own.

The Highlanders took the lead back in the 17th minute, when junior midfielder Luis Puga scored what would be the first of his two goals.

Mountain View tied the game again just after halftime, but Hazen took the lead for good in the 71st minute, thanks to Puga’s second goal.

“The whole game we couldn’t get our passing going with the consistency we wanted. Luis’ second goal was just hard work – he chased a ball down in the corner, beat a man, and scored from a bad angle,” Matthews said in a statement. “The guys worked hard on a night where we didn’t have our best.  That makes the win a little sweeter.”

The Highlanders will now play Shorecrest at 1 p.m. May 18 at Renton Stadium.

Liberty makes early exit

It could have been a showdown pitting two Renton neighbors against each other had Liberty defeated Shorecrest, but the Patriots fell short.

Liberty lost to Shorecrest, 2-0, on May 15, effectively ending the KingCo champions’ season.

The Patriots finished the season with a 12-2-3 record.