Experience favors Haspela’s HRV girls soccer team

The team’s 66 goals last season were one of the highest in recent memory, and that was due in large part to the accumulations of Columbia River Conference Player of the Year Cielo Rivera and first team all-conference scoring threat Mona Diaz. However, with these players now graduated, the goal differential might not be as high as it was last year, especially since CRC Goalkeeper of the Year Vanessa Silva also has graduated, “but I bet we can win just as many or more games this year,” said Head Coach Kevin Haspela.

This is an exciting year for this program because in Haspela’s eight years as coach he has never had a senior class as large as this one, which means both him and these girls have a lot of experience heading into the season. The final roster has 13 seniors, three juniors, and one sophomore and freshman for the upcoming season.

“This is a group of girls who have played more games together than any team I've coached,” said Haspela. “They have high soccer IQs and we can pick up where we left off in terms of problem solving and tactics.”

As practices have been going on for about two weeks now, Haspela is impressed with how well his team came into preseason physically prepared after a long summer. This has allowed him to focus less on having to condition these players and instead has given him more time to talk and work on strategies. “Having such a tenured group will make it difficult to reinvent ourselves and spark creative play,” said Haspela. But with how well prepared these kids came into play, this team is “already in practice trying out a variety of different lineups with our usual attackers playing defense and vice versa.”

Heading into their first game, this team has shown “high energy and courageous attacking movement,” he said. This is in big part due to returning senior captains Yaya Chavarria and Claire Davies, as they’ve led the team over the past two weeks in terms of work load.

This year’s team knows they can play with anyone in the state, but the biggest obstacle for them is “playing as a team at a high level consistently,” said Haspela. “Last year in our playoff loss, we had flashes of excellent soccer, but not 80 minutes of it and not as a whole team. To overcome this obstacle, we need to have the awareness to see when we are not performing at our best, the decisiveness to act, and the commitment to follow through.”

With their last game being a playoff loss to Hillsboro, the HRV girls soccer team will face them in a rematch to open their 2017 season at Henderson stadium on Sept. 5 at 4:30 p.m.