PHS soccer teams got their season underway last weekend (March 16-17), hosting Pinedale and Star Valley.

The Lady Panther soccer team played Pinedale on Friday and Star Valley on Saturday. The varsity team beat Pinedale 1-0, scoring the only goal with six seconds left in the game. The JV team won the game 2-0. Star Valley beat the varsity team 4-0 and the JV team 8-1.

Sophomore Michele Wagner scored the winning goal in the game against Pinedale. With only six seconds left in the game, a pass from Jaya Smith on the right lined up Wagner for the goal.

“There were 15 seconds left and Jaighden [Rayment]  had the ball and she worked up the field a little bit, then passed the ball to me,” junior Jaya Smith said. “I worked it up the field some more and then crossed it to the center where Michele, who had three defenders on her, somehow kicked it through them and it barely went in to the right side of the goal.”

The last-minute, game-winning goal was celebrated by lots of cheering and jumping, some of which resulted in Smith and Wagner on the ground.

“Making the winning goal was great,” Wagner said. “But I couldn’t have done it without help from the whole team, especially Jaya. She had a great cross to me and I knew I had to score.”

The coaches ended the weekend happy with the results.

“We have not skipped a beat since the state game from last year,” Coach Mr. Stan Hedges said. “We are playing better than we played at state last year, which is so refreshing that we don’t have to have a building period.”

The Panther soccer team also played Pinedale on Friday and Star Valley on Saturday. The varsity team lost 3-2 to Pinedale and the JV team won 4-0. Star Valley beat the varsity team 8-0 and the JV team 2-1.

“For a young team, it went really well,” Assistant soccer Coach Mr. Russ Schwahn said.

“We hope to see what good teams do to get ready for games and how they compete and then emulate those,” Schwahn said.

Even though the boys didn’t do as well as they hoped to, the weekend still ended in a success in some ways.

“The best part of the weekend was the amount of effort that our boys gave,” Schwahn said. “They never quit even though, at times, they were down by a lot.”