Near perfect: Miyamura girls off to best start in school history

GALLUP

At 16-1-1 overall, the Miyamura girls soccer team is off to its best start in program history.

The Lady Patriots’ only blemish this year was a PK setback to the Show Low Lady Cougars during the Rehoboth Christian soccer tournament in late August.

“It was really a tie, but we lost in PK,” Miyamura coach Russell Jamison said. “Other than that, our last game with Aztec was the first time a New Mexico team has scored on us.”

For the season, the Jamison-coached team has surrendered just only three goals (two to Arizona teams) while scoring a mind-boggling 99 goals.

“This has been a great year and we’ve worked hard all summer,” the Miyamura coach said. “We worked hard over the winter, too, in the gym and it’s starting to pay off.”

Still, Jamison didn’t expect to build an impressive resume heading into the last two games of the regular season.

“We did set a goal for ourselves to win district,” he said. “We were district runner-up last year and that left a bad taste, so our goal was to win district and get a good seed for state.

“We want a seed good enough to play that first state game at home,” he added. “We’re on our way to that, so it’s looking good.”

The Patriots will close out the season traveling to Kirtland Central tonight for a 6 p.m. game before hosting the Lady Bobcats on Tuesday.

“With KC, we didn’t have much trouble with them,” Jamison said of their 7-0 shutout win. “But you just never know in this game. Anything can happen and the best team doesn’t always win. Plus, we have to go over there with our game faces on and take care of business and if we do that the district championship is ours.”

As for Bloomfield, Jamison is expecting another tough game as Miyamura posted a 1-0 win on Oct. 2.

“They’re always tough,” the Miyamura coach said of the Bobcats. “Even last year, we played them in double overtime both times. Unfortunately, we lost and wound-up being runner up for the district.”

On Tuesday, the Patriots defeated crosstown rival Gallup 10-0 in a shortened game. Miyamura netted eight of those goals in the first half before tallying two more early ones in the second.

Stats on Maxpreps.com were not available at press time, but junior strikers Adyson Spolar and Alexis Morales combined for five goals with Spolar finishing with a hat trick.

“We had a good game, and we just had a lot of fun,” Spolar said. “I think we were looking to get in some work for Kirtland and Bloomfield to finish out our season. I had to work on some stuff, like, finishing and having good touches.”

Morales added that they started off well, but they had to adjust their formation to widen the soccer field.

“We started to bunch toward the middle, and we had to switch our formation,” Morales said. “We figured out what we were doing, and we switched it to get wider.”

Before Tuesday’s game, Spolar headed Miyamura’s attack with 25 goals while Morales had 23.

“Those two have been neck-and-neck for our top goal scorers,” Jamison said.

The two players credit the entire team for their offensive production this year. Morales says their tactical approach is focused making passing before they take a shot near the goal.

“We all know how to read each other, and we work together very well, and it shows on the field,” Morales said. “We like to pass, and when we get close to the goal we like to give-and-go.”

With a near-perfect record, Spolar believes the progress they’ve made this season is part of the natural growth of the team.

“I’ve played with these girls since we were like 9-, 10-years old, so we know how to play with each other,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard for this, and we’ve been wanting this since we started playing varsity. And now, that everyone’s older, I knew that our time was going to come.

“I’m really proud of the girls and I just hope for the best,” she added.

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