Douglas girls look ahead in win against North Valleys

MINDEN - The outcome was predictable Saturday morning when the Douglas High School girls soccer team played host to North Valleys.

Douglas, with 14 veterans back from a team that won last year's Northern 4A Regional Tournament, had little trouble on its way to a 9-0 victory in its home opener against North Valleys, a first-year school playing only its second game.

Hannah Sullivan scored three goals while Amber Gwinn contributed two goals and two assists as the Tigers improved their season record to 2-0 and presented coach Fred Schmidt with his 99th career coaching win.

It was still no big deal, according to Schmidt, who will try to pick up win No. 100 Tuesday when the Tigers face Hug in Reno.

"North Valleys is a brand new school with a young, developing program," said Schmidt, who is 99-20-18 in eight seasons at Douglas. "They have a good coach (Daryl Arrighi) who coached at Silverado and Eldorado in Las Vegas before coming up here. They have no seniors and five freshmen playing on the varsity and they have a full J.V. roster, so there's plenty of players. They're going to be good in the future."

The Tigers jumped out to a 5-0 halftime lead and used the rest of the game to try and get ready for some of the big games they will face this season.

"We worked on ball possession and on our new formations," Schmidt said. "We have a lot of experience, but the system we've used in the past really doesn't fit the personnel we have, so we're trying a different system."

Mainly, the Tigers have changed from their traditional 4-4-2 formation to a 3-5-2 that features five midfielders and more use of zone defenses.

"I want to challenge our kids to do more, and we want to give other teams different looks," Schmidt said.

Gwinn, the team's leading scorer last year who spent a good part of her summer recuperating from a partially torn MCL, gave Douglas an early 1-0 lead when she scored off an assist from Kali Schmidt in the fifth minute.

Sullivan, a sophomore, scored in the 26th minute with an assist from Britney Christen. Sullivan scored again two minutes later, this time assisted by Gwinn.

Gwinn scored with an assist from Tracey Hawks to give the Tigers a 5-0 halftime lead.

Rebecca Wallstrum scored with an assist from Jessica Girdner five minutes into the second half and Jessica Brady scored with an assist from Lindsee Porter to make it 7-0 in the 50th minute.

At that point, Schmidt instructed his players not to take any shots on goal except for headers.

Hawks hit the crossbar with one header, then found the net in the 68th minute, assisted by Molly Hernandez.

It was hard to contain enthusiasm sometimes, however, and with four minutes left to play Sullivan hit a booming shot from outside the box that found the net to give the Tigers their nine-goal cushion.

Mallory Moore played goalkeeper through the first half, while Brady and Karen Lucas shared time in the net through the second half. It didn't really matter who was back there, though, because none of the three had to make a save during the contest.

Looking ahead on the schedule, the Tigers visit Hug on Tuesday and play at Galena on Saturday, then they return home on Tuesday, Sept. 18, to face Carson in a showdown between two rivals.