Mono forced the hand of Aaron Radford.<\/p>\n
But Kentwood\u2019s girls soccer coach certainly had a nice deck from which to choose at the beginning of the season, when he learned starting goalkeeper Courtney Johnson would miss some time with mononucleosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t actually have an idea of what I was going to do,\u201d said Radford of his goalkeeping conundrum. \u201cCourtney wasn\u2019t cleared to practice (when the season began) and was just getting her energy back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fifth-year Kentwood coach, however, had an ace up his sleeve in unheralded junior Megan Walburn.<\/p>\n
Together, Johnson and Walburn have become the South Puget Sound League\u2019s toughest tandem, allowing a total of just four goals during the regular season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve definitely got a pretty strong set of goalkeepers,\u201d said Radford, whose Conquerors completed a perfect regular season last Friday with a 12-0 win over Kent-Meridian. \u201cStrong enough to where I am comfortable switching them at half. I don\u2019t feel less confident about either one.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has showed on the field.<\/p>\n
Johnson, a sophomore, missed only the opening game of the year, a 4-1 victory against Federal Way. She has split duties between the pipes with the incumbent Walburn every game since.<\/p>\n
The situation could have turned ugly early. After all, Johnson helped lead the Conquerors to the state quarterfinals a year ago. Instead, it has been quite the contrary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it has worked really well,\u201d said Johnson, a second-team all-leaguer a year ago. \u201cIt\u2019s different than last year, but definitely something I\u2019ve enjoyed. I don\u2019t see any reason why we\u2019d change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walburn agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, I thought it might be an ordeal because she started all last year and I thought we might be bumping heads,\u201d said Walburn, who, during tryouts, vowed to make this her final shot at making varsity. \u201cBut we don\u2019t. We get along, support each other and have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judging by the numbers \u2014 and, of course, by the victories \u2014 the good times have rolled into a perfect situation for Radford and the top-ranked Conquerors.<\/p>\n
How good has the Johnson-Walburn wall been?<\/p>\n
The Kentwood duo entered Wednesday night\u2019s South Puget Sound League championship match against Beamer on pace not only to break the school record for least goals allowed (10 in 2005), but to shatter it.<\/p>\n
They had yielded just four goals in 16 matches entering Wednesday\u2019s contest. That\u2019s more than 1,200 minutes of near-flawless goalkeeping, a run that includes a streak of 12 straight shutouts, which began on Sept. 16 and didn\u2019t end until Oct. 25.<\/p>\n
And if history is any indication, Walburn and Johnson should establish a new school mark during the next two weeks as playoff soccer is traditionally rather low-scoring.<\/p>\n
But the two are hardly taking credit these days for the string of goose eggs or even the wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs keepers, we haven\u2019t even had to make that many saves,\u201d Johnson conceded. \u201cA lot of it has been about our defense closing down (on the dribbler) and making our job easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defensive combination of Rachel Bindl, Andrea Jensen, Cari Witruk and Dana Wareham \u2014 the four girls who serve as Johnson and Walburn\u2019s protectors \u2014 certainly have done just that. Kentwood\u2019s unbeaten run through the league and its defensive suffocation is as much a credit to them as it is to the team\u2019s goalkeepers.<\/p>\n
All four backliners agree that the success has hinged on chemistry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really work together well,\u201d said Bindl, a junior. \u201cWe played together all of last year, so we have experience together. (Not getting credit for a shutout) isn\u2019t that big of a deal as long as we keep winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something Kentwood has done plenty of during the past four years as it enters play today on the brink of its fourth straight state berth.<\/p>\n
And though shutouts are nice, as the season nears a close, this group has only one thing on its mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe as a team want to go all the way,\u201d Wareham said. \u201cAnd we think we can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mono forced the hand of Aaron Radford.
\nBut Kentwood\u2019s girls soccer coach certainly had a nice deck from which to choose at the beginning of the season, when he learned starting goalkeeper Courtney Johnson would miss some time with mononucleosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":5834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5833"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}