Junior forward Sydney Boele of the girls Vacaville High soccer team also runs track for the Bulldogs.
Vanden High, her opponent on the pitch on Thursday night at Vacaville High, discovered that she seems to go just as fast when dribbling a soccer ball as when she is running her leg of the 4-by-400 meter relay.
Boele took everyone’s breath away when she got the ball at midfield and dribbled all the way down the left sideline, angled her way to the goal and blasted it into the net to put her team up 3-0 early in the second half.
It was the second of three goals on the night for the junior forward, who led her team to a 4-1 victory and kept them undefeated at 6-0 in Monticello Empire League play. Vanden fell to 3-2-1.
Prior to the match when Vanden huddled up, captain Kylie Eisan told her teammates, “Let’s make every chance count. If you have a shot, take it.”
The only problem was that Vacaville played such stifling defense that those chances were few and far between. All ten Bulldogs dropped back on defense whenever Vanden got in scoring range, making it a frustrating night for the visiting Vikings.
“We’ve got a very strong defensive line in general,” said first-year Vacaville head coach Jen Eggley. “They’re solid back there and we’ve been working on everybody drop, win that ball back, be first to it.”
The defense was not tested early on, as Vacaville pressed most of the action. At the four-minute mark of the first half, Boele hit a hard shot on goal from the left side on which Viking keeper Delaney Ramsell made a nice save.
Four minutes later freshman Natalia Rodriguez hit a perfect through-ball past the Vanden defense to senior Dakota Marin, who took it at around the 35-yard marker on the football field all the way down to about five yards in front of keeper Ramsell.
“I just knew I had to get closer to the keeper because a shot from far like that is hard to bank in,” Marin said. “Just wait a little bit longer. I waited until I saw her going to the left, shot to the right. It’s all in the body language because if you look slightly to the left and dip your shoulder a little bit the keeper will read that and they will go to the left.”
Her shot was true and her team had a 1-0 lead.
Vacaville continued to press the action, earning a couple of direct free kicks toward the end of the half, though neither attempt connected. The Bulldog offense was pesky and unrelenting, and Rodriguez got a shot on goal from 25 yards out that Ramsell collected with a couple of minutes left in the half, which ended with Vacaville still holding that 1-0 lead.
Boele wasted little time when the second half opened, recording her first goal when she made a short run on the left side and smashed it home for a 2-0 lead just a couple of minutes into the action.
A few minutes later Vanden’s Jordyn Peter did her best to chase down a through-ball, but Vacaville goalie Bailey Erbland snatched up the ball just before Peter could reach it.
One minute later Boele made her amazing half-the-field dash to give her team a commanding 3-0 lead.
“I was thinking goal all the way,” she said. “Once I beat the girls I knew straightaway I was by myself.”
With 12 minutes remaining in the contest, Vanden’s Denise Hernandez had a shot from the right side sail high over the football crossbar behind the soccer goal. But when she got a second chance a few minutes later, she didn’t miss it.
Defensive back Catelyn Rech hit a perfect direct free kick from midfield onto the waiting foot of Hernandez, who banged it home for Vanden’s lone goal of the night.
The Vikings forced another direct free kick with about five minutes left in the contest, but Rech was unable to repeat the magic, this time hitting it over the goal.
Three minutes later, Boele maneuvered on the left side, holding the ball out for several seconds before attacking and scoring her third goal of the evening.
“My teammate was trying to get the ball but I knew she was offsides so I had to take it,” she explained. “Otherwise we would have lost it.”
Just before the final whistle, Rech launched another direct free kick, but it fell into the hands of Erbland.
Boele played the whole game until Eggley gave her a rest after her final goal.
“It is safer to have her on the field than on the bench, because she’s like, ‘Coach. I’m ready. Coach!'” said Eggley with a laugh.
The coach said that everything seemed to come together for the Bulldogs on this night.
“We actually found our feet,” she said. “We were passing well, we looked up, we saw our runs being made, we put the ball where it needed to be.”
Marin and Boele acknowledged that COVID initially cast a shadow on this season.
“At the beginning it was rough because we didn’t know whether or not we were going to have a season,” said Boele. “But once we heard we had a season that’s what brought up everybody’s morale.”
“As a senior I know I really wanted that last season with the girls because I’ve played with some of these girls for two, three, four years,” Marin said. “I’m just super happy to be out here playing.”
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