Unbeaten Tigers Defeat 2nd Ranked St. George

SPOKANE - The Waits­burg Prescott Tigers are 2nd in the state after defeating the next-to-best team in Wash­ington

- St. George - 3-2 Saturday.

"It was a very interest­ing game," assistant coach Bart Baxter said. "They're definitely the toughest team we've faced. It was a very physical game. We're the toughest team they've faced. We've never been that close."

WP, the brand-new team in the 2B league from the Touchet Valley, has now beat­en the top two teams, River­side Christian and St. George, to go 5-0 in the league. But the victory didn't come easy. After leading 2-0 for the first 36 minutes with goals from Francisco Gonzalez and Miguel Velacco, top St. George striker Karl Muel­heims scored on the Tigers shortly before halftime. Muelheims scored again right into the second half, and Baxter decided to double up on the dangerous forward, ef­fectively shutting him down. The assistant coach said his team got overconfident and stopped playing its tight­ly practiced game of quick, one-tough passes and fast breaks. "It (the tie breakers) was a wakeup call," Baxter said. "The kids got away from their game, but they buckled down and got back into it. It was a great game. No doubt about it." Baxter said he put Keven Ortega on Muelheims and Jose Esquivel on center to effectively double up on the leading striker during the last 15 minutes of the game. That prevented St. George from scoring again, but not WP.

With a cross from Ve­lacco, forward Lino Diaz put the Tigers ahead 3-2 with a header that won the game. St. George hosted WP on an unusually small field with relatively slow, tall grass. Those playing condi­tions will be different for the Tigers' next game against St. George at WP's home field on Oct. 15 in Prescott, which has short and "fast" grass. In a home game Tuesday afternoon against the Dayton Bulldogs, the Tigers again dominated the field, beating the neighboring team 13-0. "It was a varsity game, but we played our JV players," Baxter said. This was W-P's second defeat of Dayton. The top-ranking team beat the Bull­dogs last Tuesday in a game also played in Prescott 19-0.