The Mount Si High School girls soccer team opened last week with three games against Kingco 4A opponents.

On Tuesday, Sept. 9, the Wildcats and Redmond Mustangs played to a 0-0 tie.

“We got six shots to their three,” said Mount Si coach Darren Brown. “Once again we had opportunities to finish, (but) didn’t finish.”

On Thursday, Sept. 11, Mount Si hosted Bothell. It looked at the start as if the Wildcats were going to run away with it, but at the end, it was anything but a blowout. The game gradually turned physical, and it ended in a very hotly-contested 1-1 draw that left Brown disappointed.

“I thought we were flat tonight,” he said. “They outworked us. They were more aggressive and they wanted it a lot more than we did.”

Senior forward Stephanie Burk offered an explanation.

“After Meghan (Travis) scored the first goal, we got really got comfortable with ourselves, and said ‘Okay, we have this game,’” she said. “We relaxed and we should have kept our intensity up, but we didn’t keep it up as much as we should’ve. Then they scored and then we started playing aggressive again, but it was a different type of intensity. It wasn’t smart or clever; it was more physical and powerful.”

Mount Si started out with a bang, just four minutes in. Fairfield-bound senior Nikki Stanton fired a shot on goal that was stopped by the Bothell goalie, but the ball got away from her and onto the waiting foot of Meghan Travis, and the sophomore made no mistake, punching the ball right back into the net.

“I definitely can’t take full credit for that,” Travis said. “It was such an awesome cross by [Stanton] and all I had to do was top it in.”

The Wildcats then held the lead through the rest of the half, despite several good chances from both sides, and took the 1-0 score into halftime.

In the 52nd minute, Bothell’s Devon Eckling broke in off a misplay by the Wildcat defense, and punched it in past a diving Mount Si goalie, Marika Loudenback. Things got steadily more physical after that. Each side received a yellow card as the game went on, but many Wildcat fans were outraged in the 64th minute when a Bothell player appeared to nail Mount Si’s Laura Barnes hard with her arm. A foul was called, but most Wildcat partisans were hoping for a card to be assessed on the play; none was. Barnes was taken out of the game but didn’t appear to be seriously injured.

Mount Si went up to Pop Keeney Stadium in Bothell last Saturday, Sept. 13, and played the Inglemoor Vikings as part of a series of games involving Kingco 3A teams against their 4A counterparts. Angela Fatigati scored the game’s lone goal for the Vikings, as Inglemoor handed the Wildcats their first loss of the season 1-0. Mount Si played a solid game, but could not put anything into the net.

Mount Si hosts Liberty on Thursday, Sept. 18, to open the Kingco 3A schedule. Game time is 7:30 p.m.