COLORADO SPRINGS – Pine Creek making it through a season without a league loss has become “tradition,” according to Eagles junior Ally Watt.
That tradition was upheld this year and the Eagles continued to play their high level of soccer in Tuesday’s 4-0 win over Brighton in the first round of the 5A state girls soccer playoffs.
The Eagles have had a balanced scoring attack all season and it showed once again as Mattie Cutts led the effort Tuesday with two goals — more than enough to seal the deal against the Bulldogs.
The two goals that Cutts scored in the first 12 minutes of Tuesday night’s game were twice as many as she had scored all season. But it’s that kind of stat that shows just how special this Eagles team has been all year.
“I feel like all season I’ve been giving players (scoring chances) and tonight I came in with the mentality that if I get the open chance I’m going to take it,” Cutts said. “That’s what I did and I was also at the right place at the right time, so that helped.”
On any given day it could’ve been one of several players for the Eagles who could pace the team to a win. The Eagles boasted six players who scored at least 18 points on the year. Not many teams have the kind of depth where their leading goal scorer (Watt) could sit out a first round playoff game due to track obligations and the team as a whole would not skip a beat.
“It shows how strong we are,” Watt said. “Even if I’m not there, they don’t need to depend on me to get through all this and they have great and amazing players.
The only two blemishes on the Eagles’ record this season were a 1-0 loss against 4A No. 1 seed Cheyenne Mountain and a 3-1 loss against ThunderRidge. But for the sixth consecutive season, the Eagles were strong where it counted for them, that being league play. In their last 40 league matches, the Eagles are 37-0-3, a streak that began in April of 2008.
“We work really hard to do things the right way as far as our goals which are to work hard and have more fun,” coach John Frederick said. “We’ve created a great atmosphere and people want to be a part of it.”
That atmosphere has paid off with consistent success over the last several seasons, but this year sticks out as a truly dominating year for the Eagles. Throughout the course of the season they outscored their opponents 55-12. The distribution in scoring is far more noticeable this year as the Eagles had six players who scored at least 18 points during the regular season. The 2012-13 Eagles team only had two.
“If you’re in the right position, we’ll give you the ball,” Cutts said. “It’s not that we only look to certain players. Because we have so much depth on this team everyone is willing to give someone else the ball because we trust our teammates and that’s been able to make everyone so successful.”
With the win over Brighton on Tuesday, the Eagles will host Grandview in Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup.