Somerset girls soccer teams ends season with honor

• Cassie Schmidt

Somerset’s Cassie Schmidt, who scored the winning goal later in the game, is shown booting the ball upfield in last Tuesday’s Spartan win over Osceola.

Talk about it

Honor isn’t necessarily earned in handling winning, but in growth from defeat.

After losing their first 17 games, the Somerset Spartans can hold up their heads with honor about how they finished the season. The Spartans won two of their final five games and they finished the season with a respectable effort in the WIAA playoffs.

The Spartans finished the regular season with a homefield 3-2 win over Osceola last Tuesday. The Somerset season ended last Thursday when they lost at Rice Lake in the WIAA Division 2 regionals, 4-0.

The win over Osceola was the crowning achievement to the Spartan season. The Spartans scored first, with Jade Buchanan getting the only goal of the first half midway through the period. Buchanan used her body to block the ball as it came to the front of the net, deflecting the ball into the net.

Osceola came back to tie the game early in the second half. How would the Spartans respond? They got the winning goal with 10 minutes left in the game, then played strong defense to fend off any Osceola scoring threats.

Cassie Schmidt scored the winning goal. Paige Wagner took a free kick, booting the ball over the crowd of players in front of the net. Schmidt ran onto the ball behind the pack and popped the ball into the net.

Somerset coach Erin Wilson spoke proudly about how her team fought through the dark stretches they faced this season.

“This was by far our best game,” Wilson said. “For the girls to come back and get two wins in their last three regular season games says something about how hard they worked.”

The Spartans were realistic about their chances in the WIAA playoffs. They faced Rice Lake in the opening game of the season and were trampled 10-0 by the fast Warrior team on the Rice Lake artificial turf. The Spartans wanted to show how much they’ve improved since that opening loss and Wilson said this was a fair measurement of the team’s progress.

Somerset kept Rice Lake scoreless for the first 30 minutes of the game, before the Warriors scored twice in the last 10 minutes of the half. The Warriors added two more goals in the second half.

“The girls were happy with how they performed,” Wilson said.

Tags: sports, somerset, spartans, soccer, prep