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Jamison, Martinez score two each in dominant season opener for Steamboat girls soccer

Sports Sports |

Shelby Reardon
  

Steamboat Springs soccer players celebrate after Darby Martinez gave the team a 1-0 lead during a game against Palisade on Saturday, March 12.
Shelby Reardon/Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs High School soccer players Darby Martinez and Gwyn Jamison have a friendly competition going, seeing who will score more goals throughout the season. If the season opener was any indication, it’s going to be a close competition.

Each girl scored two goals, helping the Sailors defeat Palisade 5-0 on Saturday, March 12, at home.

“Last year, she’d score and I’d score,” Jamison said. “Then she’d score again and I scored again. It kind of carried over from last year.”

Last year, Jamison ended the season with one more goal than Martinez. One game in, the pair is tied.

Martinez scored first with a bit of a lucky goal. The senior dribbled up the right side of the field and lightly kicked the ball towards the goal. The shot didn’t have a lot of gas on it, so Palisade goalkeeper ​​Abbey Tscherter didn’t approach it with a lot of caution. She casually reached down to grab the slow-moving ball, but missed. The ball rolled leisurely into the goal.

Jamison, a sophomore, added a goal 12 minutes later, beating her defender and squaring up in front of the goal about 18 yards out. Her gorgeous, arching kick floated above the goalie and dropped perfectly into the top right corner of the net.

A little over 10 minutes later, Martinez had a break-away chance and, instead of slamming the ball past the goalie, used a well-timed touch to push the ball into the net. Jamison extended the lead to 4-0 with a goal early in the second half.

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The two Sailors aren’t letting a friendly competition get in the way of the team’s success though.

Even though the two players will likely lead the team in scoring, they don’t dominate it. They spend the game looking for scoring opportunities, regardless of who gets the goal.

“I just try to get as close to the goal as possible,” Jamison said. “If it’s me with the ball, that’s great, but if it’s my teammate with the ball, it’s the same amount of excitement.”

Partway through the second half, Jamison found junior Alexa Brabec front and center, about 25 yards from the goal. Brabec battled one-on-one with a Bulldog up to the 18-yard line and put all she could on the ball as she tumbled forward, tripped up with her opponent. Tscherter scooped up the barely booted ball for the save.

With two and a half minutes to play, Brabec had another chance. She put a little bit more muscle on the kick, which sent the ball into the net.

Reina Bomberski was also itching for a goal all day, having a few chances, but never quite got a solid shot on net.

“We got to the goal, and it wasn’t one-dimensional. We saw (offense) being created from wide, centrally and some combinations,” said head coach Rob Bohlmann. “That’s really good. The focus moving forward is better connection from our midfield to our forwards.”

With 12 and a half minutes left in the game, Bohlmann subbed out senior goalie Sam Campbell for sophomore Ryanne Catterson. Even with Catterson and other less-experienced players on the field for the final stretch of the game, Steamboat kept Palisade off the board.

“We’ve got an amazing group of different playing personalities that really mesh well together, and we saw that today,” Bohlmann said. “We saw 22 different players that played. To be able to have the ability, early in the season, to look at all the combinations is a great thing.”

The win was a confidence booster for the team, and showed that the new formation they are trying is clearly working.

“I like the new formation,” Martinez said. “Playing with that helped us find our rhythm. Our passes were connecting with this team. So, hopefully that continues for the rest of the season.”

Steamboat Springs 5, Palisade 0

SS – 3 2 – 5

P – 0 0 – 0

First half

SS – Darby Martinez (Sam Campbell) 32:24

SS – Gwyn Jamison, 20:37

SS – Martinez, 8:50

Second half

SS – Jamison, 35:50

SS – Alexa Brabec, 2:27

Shelby Reardon is the assistant editor at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. To reach her, call 970-871-4253, email sreardon@SteamboatPilot.com or follow her on Twitter @ByShelbyReardon.

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