The Susitna Valley Rams won their third consecutive State Championship for co-ed soccer with a 2-0 win over Cook Inlet Academy in the championship game on Saturday.
The Rams dominated their opponents this year, finishing the season undefeated with eighteen wins, zero losses. In August, before the season opener, Coach Steve Harrison didn’t know what to expect of his team.
“So we had a really solid base but the big question mark was last year’s Covid season. We weren’t able to play any of our normal teams so we never got a chance to see what they looked like or didn’t know what they had. So going into this season, as the games kinda went by and we got a look at the rest of the league and we started to realize that maybe we’re going to be unbeatable and that’s what it turned out being.”
Co-ed soccer is a relatively new sport for Su-Valley. This is only the eighth season the school has fielded a team. In 2014, the first year for soccer at Su-Valley, many players didn’t even know the rules of the game. Eight years later, Coach Harrison credits the middle school program for preparing the athletes for his team.
“We don’t have much youth soccer but we do have a really good junior high program. Jamie Westnedge has run that program for the last, I don’t know, five or six years and he’s a former soccer player and a good coach. And so all those kids start out with a good solid base of fundamentals and pick it up pretty quickly.”
The Rams have ten seniors on the roster this year. Striker Weston Slatter won the Most Valuable Player award for the State Tournament. Another senior standout is defensive player, Bryson Jolley, who was named to the All-Conference and All-Tournament teams. Mica Wilson, who scored twenty goals this year – the most of any female in Su-Valley history – was named to the All-Conference team, and India Roderick, was named to the State All-Tournament team.
Coach Harrison also gave accolades to Su-Valley’s goalie, Finn Benischek. Because of the team’s outstanding defense, Benischek enjoyed a relatively easy job this year. However, he only gave up four goals the entire year and was a solid last stop whenever opponents came close to scoring.
Coach Harrison acknowledges that the ten seniors on this year’s team will be difficult to replace. But he and his coaching staff are eager to see what impact the seniors have had on the younger players, and what those players might do in 2022.
