Tigers Ranked Third In Stateminded

PRESCOTT - Just few weeks into the season, the brand new Waitsburg-Prescott Tigers are already ranked third among the state's 25 B2 teams, and perhaps they should be even higher. "We beat the number one-ranked team twice," head coach Rickie Hamilton re­WP

under his breath dur­ing Tuesday afternoon's rout of the Dayton Bulldogs 19-0. "But I'd rather be at the bot­tom

so we don't have a target on our backs."

The team Hamilton re­ferred to is Yakima's Riv­erside Christian Cougars, which the Tigers beat for the second time on Friday. This time the outcome was 5 - 2. "I'm really satisfied at how my boys played, how they hustled," Hamilton said about Friday's game.

The crowd on the side­lines was satisfied as well - parents, siblings, and large crowds of Prescott school children cheered, clapped and called out encourage­ments. "They only really got one goal on us," Hamilton said. The Cougars scored one goal during game play and one in the penalty box. In soccer, the stats tell most of the story, he said. The Cougars made just fiveattempted goals during the course of the game, while the Tigers shot 21 times. "Most goals against good teams come when they make mistakes," Hamilton said. "We started out putting them on the defense, then all you have to do is attack, attack, attack, wearing them out. They start making mistakes, and we capitalize on it."

The Tigers played a physi­cal game Friday, never letting up, moving constantly.

"That's the idea with soc­cer," Hamilton said. "Basi­cally you're going to see that with upper division teams. You have to get physical or you're going to have the ball taken away from you. You have to play their game, and then step it up a notch further." Hamilton said the Tigers are off to a good start, but it's still early in the season. The Tigers' game against Dayton showed WP does not have any leading scorers, which means the wealth of goals is spread evenly among about five players, including Francisco Gonzalez (with five against the Bulldogs), Oscar Gonzalez with four and Jairo Gonzalez with three. So many effective strikers are hard to mark for an op­ponent. What makes it even more challenging is the way WP players communicate and connect. Miguel Velacco had seven assists, Omar Vir­gen six, Francisco Gonzalez four and Luis Torres four. Dayton head coach D. J. Frame said WP is a team his Bulldogs can learn from, say­ing Hamilton is a coach with a lot of class, and his players have a lot of skills. Tues­day's score was a lob-sided 14 - 0 at half time. Then WP deployed many of its JV players against the Bulldogs, and Dayton rallied to hang in there to slow down the point spread.

"I can't say anything about the score," said Frame, who pointed out he missed several of his key starters, includ­ing Davy Phillips, Demetri Tziovaras, Gabe Garcia and Marshall Nechodom. "The (assistant) coaches talked to them at half time and got them to play for their pride."

The Bulldogs came close to winning their first game of the season against Northport in Spokane on Saturday. Of the two games, they lost the first one 3-0, but pushed the second into overtime 2-2. With still no score after that, Northport won the penalty shootout 5-4.

"It's one of the first times I have seen our team play with emotion, feeling like they compete with some of these teams," Frame said. Last week, Dayton lost 9-2 against Walla Walla Val­ley Academy on Tuesday and 4-0 against Moses Lake on Thursday. Overall, Frame said, the team is improving, playing better together and develop­ing its skills.