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Steamboat soccer squeaks one out

Joel Reichenberger

It was hardly the kind of warmup he wanted his team to have heading into perhaps it two most important games of the season. Rob Bohlmann said his Steamboat Springs High School girls soccer team has no choice but to try and get back up to speed on the fly, however.

The Sailors beat league cellar-dweller Summit, 1-0, on Monday. That lone goal game with just eight minutes remaining when Natalie Bohlmann converted a Ali Pougiales pass into a goal.

Bohlmann said his team was sloppy coming off the high school’s week-long spring break. But now that the team is heading to play today at Palisade in the first round of the Western Slope tournament, Steamboat is out of time to sharpen its game.



“It’s not an ideal situation,” Bohlmann said, “but it’s reality. There’s not much of an option.”

The tournament pulls the best four teams from the league’s two divisions. Steamboat’s only guaranteed way to get a spot in the state-wide playoffs is by winning twice, a tall task against a tough field. The Sailors lost to Palisade, 1-0, early in the season. The winner of that matchup will play the winner of Glenwood Springs, which Steamboat defeated 3-1, and Battle Mountain, which played the Sailors to a pair of draws this season. The losers will also play to decide third place.



Steamboat would still have a chance to be selected for the Class 4A tournament even with a loss, though it chances go up with a win.

Bohlmann said it’s not the field he’d like to face with that on the line, but in an odd way, maybe Monday’s slow performance will be an asset.

“We were able to get through the adversity of that game and we found a way to win,” he said. “Our soccer did get better in the second half. We will be able to take some momentum from the way the game worked out. We have to. We don’t have much of an option.”


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