CROSSFIRE SOUNDERS
'84
With only 4 returning players the 1997 season was a great challenge for the coaches. The team was very competitive in Summer tournaments, missing the 2nd round at the Rainier Challenge by 1 point and losing the finals at the Puma cup in a shoot out. The team continued to improve throughout the regular season but just couldn't find that luck that every team needs to help you through the season. Our goalie was injured about halfway through the season forcing us to rotate some of our field players into the goal for the remainder of the season. Three additional players left due to injuries and other reasons leaving us pretty lean for the Snickers cup tournament. Our First game was a close game with a 0-1 loss to FC Eastside Red. The second game, another close game 0-0 with 10 minutes left, Royals win 2-0. The final game of our season vs Spectre 85. 0-0 at half time, two defensive errors and some good saves by the Spectre goalie another 0-2 defeat. Throughout it all the girls kept a great attitude and played some great soccer.
The 1998 season presented some new challenges to the team. We had 10 returning players and picked up 7 more through tryouts. We had a very dismal performance at spring tournaments which lead to some concern going into the League Placement Tournament in Pasco. As luck would have it we didn't have the best draw for LPTs and we ended up going to a seventh game to qualify for the Classic division. During the summer we lost 2 players one moved away and the other decided to go back to her old team. This left us with a roster of 15. Our performance in the summer was not much better than the spring, but we were determined to win our division. We started the season with 7 straight wins. We faltered a bit in mid season with 2 losses and then a scoreless tie in 6 inches of water up in Belingham. We finally finished with 3 more wins and our final game was cancelled due to snow. Thus finishing first in our division with the least goals against for any team in the premier divisions. We went on from there to play in the state cup tournament. Our group had all division 1 teams but the girls rose to the occasion and continually got better. We came in second in our group which put us through to the quarter finals. Unfortunately over half of our starting team was out sick the week preceding the quarter final game so our performance was not very stellar. We lost 0-2 but we did have some opportunities, so 1999 we will be fighting it out for a spot in division 2.
We put things together at the League Placement Tournament in Yakima for 1999 and earned a spot in division 2. We have been steadily improving moving up from 2-12 at U-13 to first in Classic for U-14 and we finished middle of the pack in Division 2 for our U-15 year. 2000- The team went through a lot of changes again in 2000. We ended the season with a roster of 14 and only 6 players remaining from the year before. We had several injuries during the season that made it even tougher. We started fairly well by winning the Viking cup in May but we were pretty beat up over the summer. We remained competitive in the regular season but we could only muster 3 ties. We could not break that win barrier.