JDHS girls soccer clinches state title<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n“It was tough to see him go down. He’s been a starter in the same position for several years. We had to do some adjusting and moved some players around,” Lewis said, adding that he asked West who he’d like to cover his position.<\/p>\n
West suggested his friend and long-time teammate Lucas Erickson take his place on the pitch.<\/p>\n
“That created an emotional boost to his play,” Lewis said, adding that West joined the team via FaceTime for pre-game chats and cheers, to boost morale.<\/p>\n
Before the championship, the team battled COVID quarantines, Zoom-based practices, canceled trips, player absences, player injuries, and a pre-season coaching swap.<\/p>\n
“I’ll call it a whirlwind year,” Lewis said. “You had no idea what would happen week-to-week. The kids did whatever it took to still have their season.”<\/p>\n
Lewis expects to be a contender in next year’s tournament, thanks to a large class of rising seniors.<\/p>\n
“I know the kids are driven, he said.<\/p>\n
Trophy serves as a metaphor<\/strong><\/p>\nOn the way home from Anchorage, the player figurine atop the state championship trophy suffered a slight injury that resulted in a broken ankle. Lewis said that was the perfect ending to the unusual season.<\/p>\n
“It builds into the narrative of the injuries we faced at state and before,” Lewis said. “It’s a visual reminder of what it takes to persevere and stand up when others fall down. We will let it be displayed that way as part of the narrative of our program.”<\/p>\n
JDHS finishes third<\/strong><\/p>\nAcross town, JDHS soccer coach Gary Lehnhart offered his congratulations to his team’s key rival.<\/p>\n
“Congratulations to them. They had a great season,” Lehnhart said.<\/p>\n
Lehnhart said that the Crimson Bears got better each week of the season, even if they didn’t get a shot at the state championship.<\/p>\n
“We felt like we were getting better as the season went on,” he said.<\/p>\n
JDHS beat North Pole High School 2-0 in the first round of play and then lost to second-place Soldotna 3-1 in the semi-finals before beating Kenai 3-0 in the consolation round.<\/p>\n
Lehnhat said the team was disappointed to lose to Soldotna. “We made a mistake and didn’t put them away. Then they started with pressure. We had a chance and missed them,” he said.<\/p>\n
Lehnhart said that the team’s last game was the best of the season across the board.<\/p>\n
“It’s good to go out with a dominating performance. To see the growth and the team and see all these young players. I was really pleased with what they accomplished,” he added.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears won the Team Academic Award for highest GPA and the Sportsmanship Award.<\/p>\n
“Those awards speak highly of the kids and how the team conducts itself,” he said. “I like winning those awards.”<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Dana Zigmund at dana.zigmund@juneauempire.com or 907-308-4891.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JDHS came in third <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":71307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[240],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-71306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports","tag-high-school-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71306"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=71306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}