By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–  The Chemeketa Women’s Soccer showed a lot of their potential against Centralia Thursday afternoon in the Storm’s non-league match at Chemeketa Community College.

West Albany’s Jenna Sally helped pace the offense, setting up opportunities that Chemeketa had and led to the 6-2 result in favor of the Storm.  Woodburn’s Myranda Marquez led the offense with three goals as the Storm offense scored six-straight goals after going down 1-0 early.

“I thought we did pretty good, we’ve been incorporating what we’ve been learning in practices and I thought we did good working up from the back along the sidelines,” said Marquez.

“It was about remaining chill.  We took our time and it paid off, and we took our time on the field,” “That went on through our warm-ups and right into the game.  We were all taking our time and finding the best pass,” adds Sally.

And it was weird to image at one point of this game that there was a sense of scramble as the Blazers took advantage of a defensive hiccup to take a quick 1-0 lead in the opening ten minutes.  But as Chemeketa knotted it up a few minutes later, the return of the ‘chill’ came back over Chemeketa.  Albright-Santana and Choi each added goals to hand the Storm a 3-1 halftime lead.

“It was huge because it’s normal to freak out when we’re down by one or we’re tied.  It’s just normal, but it was huge for us to grow in our third 11v11 (game) together,” Sally described.  “It’s a new team.  Being a two-year college we get new people every year, just connecting with them and just watching them play back on the video and seeing where they’re making their runs and how I can be better for them?”

Chemeketa had two scrimmages against Blue Mountain and Walla Walla leading into their first home match of the year Thursday.  The Storm overcame a slow start to the half and weathered the pressure that Centralia brought to start the half and eventually would add two Marquez goals and another Choi goal, building a 6-1 lead before the Blazers got a late goal to cut the deficit to four.

Those slow starts will be something that they’ll look to work on as they travel to Pierce on Sunday before some NWAC Friendlies August 23 and 24.  Their first NWAC South Region game will be September 7 at Southwestern Oregon Community College.

“As we continue to go on through the season, I think it’s going to get better and we’re still getting used to each other,” Marquez said.

“It’s going to be huge because if we go down, it’s going to get a lot harder to get back up.  So  if we start ahead, that’s going to make our journey so much more better,” adds Sally.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald