Mount Si’s girls’ soccer team is at its most experienced level in years.

Combined with a rebuilding trend affecting most other teams in Kingco 3A this season, that experience could aid the Wildcats in a state drive.

“This year, I expect great things,” said coach Darren Brown, back for his eighth season. With 11 seniors on his team, he is certainly expecting quite a bit.

“It’s the most seniors I’ve ever had on our roster, which I like. It’s great,” Brown said.

Leading that group of 11 is Alexis Pearlstein, who has verbally committed to Ball State, a D-I Mid-American Conference school in Indiana. She says fans should look for nothing less than the best from this veteran team.

“People can expect hard play,” the defender said. “We’re old, so we should know how to win.”

If she signs, Pearlstein would be the second girls’ D-I player in three years for Brown; the other, Nikki Stanton, graduated in 2008 and plays for Fairfield in Connecticut.

Other players to watch include seniors Jessica Hargett and Hailey Conway, junior Laura Barnes, and sophomores Alyssa Proudfoot, Molly Sellers and Miranda Rawlings.

Sellers, who plays a lot of basketball during the year, both with Mount Si and a local club team, said playing soccer benefits her hoops skills.

“It helps you with your speed,” she said. “It’s a lot faster out here on the soccer field than it is on the basketball court and it helps you with the side to side movement and the quick spurts.”

Another key player to keep an eye on is the team’s new goalkeeper. Senior Carly Weidenbach takes over for graduate Marika Loudenback, and she will have a tough act to follow, as the goalkeepers under Brown—Loudenback, Jessica Blessard and Caitlin Braun—all found tremendous success, with both Blessard and Braun translating that into college rides at Eastern Washington University. Pearlstein thinks the two-sport athlete (Weidenbach also plays softball) will be fine.

“She’s such a hard worker, I have no doubt that she’ll do nothing but her best,” Pearlstein said.

The league, according to Brown, is down this year, after having a number of top players graduate, such as Sammamish’s Anna Geldenhuys, MI’s Erin Bourginon and Bellevue’s Kate Bennett, but he suspects that his team may still be in for a fight. Liberty, with their budding phenom Cassidy Nangle, is seen by Brown to be the favorite this fall, despite bringing in a new coach.

“If you look at their roster, they’re stacked,” Brown said.

It will be an interesting season. But Pearlstein said it’s all up to the team.

“We can go as far as we want to,” she said. “It just depends on our mindset on the season.”