Regular season games don't get much bigger than Tuesday's matchup between Pullman soccer (10-1, 7-0) and West Valley.
Leading West Valley by a game in the Great Northern League standings, a loss for the Hounds would have put them in a tie for first place. A win meant a two-game lead (plus the tiebreaker) with just five games left in the 12-game league schedule.
Despite a 12-4 deficit in shots, Pullman received key goals from Becky Birchett and Cayla Whiteside to earn a 2-0 victory in Pullman and put themselves in the driver's seat for the GNL title. Of course, after having won its 10th game in a row and holding a goals for and against margin of 40-7 this season, it appears no one else is even in the car.
"This win was huge. We're in a good spot," Pullman coach Doug Winchell said. "And mentally we're in a good spot, because we won down two starters. The win does everything. It takes lots of pressure off us with five games left."
In the 26th minute - with their first shot of the contest - the Hounds got on the board. Bre Daugherty dribbled away from a defender in the corner and found Becky Birchett standing alone on the edge of the box. Birchett struck the ball high and hard, and while West Valley keeper Rachel McGlothlen got a hand on it, the shot still tucked into the right corner of the goal for a 1-0 lead.
The lead was huge for a Pullman team battling without two of its top attackers, Stephanie Winchell and Maddi Cillay.
The icing on the cake came in the 47th minute when Diana DeWald found Whiteside, whose shot was well-struck into the wind and found the net for a 2-0 advantage.
"I basically took the ball from Diana," Whiteside playfully mocked herself.
While the contest was played primarily at West Valley's end, the 12-4 advantage in shots on goal was misleading.
"Although they had 12 shots, only one made me nervous," Winchell said. "Part of that is my comfort with Dakota (Wickard). She's just good. Balls that are coming in, I'm pretty confident she's going to get most of them. In those 12 shots we didn't really get threatened."
That faith is well-placed, as the Hounds now boast five of the eight shutouts in the entire GNL this season.
"We're stopping people. You can go through all the cliches - defense wins championships," Winchell said. "If they don't score, we don't lose."
Pullman will take on a tough Clarkston squad on Thursday.
"They've had a phenomenal season out of nowhere and they have been exceedingly tough in Clarkston and that's where we're going," Winchell said. "We can't sit back and think we're hot stuff, because we're not hot stuff yet. We can talk about being hot stuff at the end of the season if we get to the Final Four. That's our goal and that's never happened at Pullman High School."
West Valley 0 0 - 0
Pullman 1 1 - 2
First half
Pull - Becky Birchett (assist Bre Daugherty, 26th minute
Second half
Pullman - Cayla Whiteside (assist Diana DeWald), 47th
Andrew Nemec can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 231, or by email to anemec@dnews.com.
