PORT ANGELES — It might be the greatest anomaly in Port Angeles High School sports history: A boys soccer team that couldn’t lose.
That’s exactly what former Roughriders head coach Scott Soule had from 1999 to 2000.
It was a group that won back-to-back Olympic League titles with a 30-0-2 league record, and came as close as any team in school history, regardless of the sport, to a state title.
“Soccer was their priority,” said Soule while reflecting on the team 10 years later. “[Now] in the summer we have summer baseball and basketball and those kind of things.
“Well, they had soccer.”
Indeed, the 2000 team’s roster was filled with players who had an almost religious dedication to the sport since grade school (see story on Page B3).
Playing together in competitive leagues almost year-round since the mid ’90s, the team’s core players developed a sort of telekinetic bond on the pitch.
It produced a brand of soccer that featured such natural fluidity and devastating precision that their Olympic League opponents became mere patsies.
In their final season — a dream run in the spring of 2000 that ended in the Class 4A state championship game — the Riders outscored their opponents 81-10 (68-5 in league) on their way to a school record 19 straight victories.
“We were good all over,” said Soule. “We scored by far the most goals of any team I’ve coached and we allowed the fewest.
“Our goal was to get the ball into the middle in the air and either finish with our foot or our head . . . but out of the air.
“It was an attack most teams weren’t used to.”
The offense worked in large part because the Riders had a pair of big forwards in Rick Smith (6-foot-3) and Conn Doherty (6-1).
The two played off each other seamlessly up front, with Doherty (15 goals, 11 assists) often setting up Smith (32 goals) for scores.
“When we got a chance around the goal . . . we would usually find some way to hit the back of the net,” said Smith, the 2000 Olympic League MVP.
“That’s where we stood above some of the teams we played. We had that finishing ability.”
The midfield, led by Nathan Smith, Tyson Young, Ryan Romero and Kyle Trussell, often put its forwards in good positions as well.
Trussell had a long distance flip throw-in, and the entire group had good ball skills and passing ability.
“We were always attacking,” said Doherty, who went on to play four years of college ball at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
“I think a lot of it goes back to playing together for so long and understanding what a person is going to do in certain situations.
“It was interesting transitioning from that to college. You don’t really appreciate the natural understanding until you move out of that.
“In college I would expect a certain player to make a certain run. And when that player doesn’t do it, I’d think, ‘Well, why didn’t you do that?'”
Rick Smith also possessed a deadly free kick: A dipping, almost knuckle-ball-like shot that baffled goalkeepers.
“He was able to strike a ball hard, and it just had a dip that was amazing,” Soule said.
“A lot of kids bend the ball with a right-to-left or left-to-right trajectory.
“[Smith] had a dip so that it was rising and then it would just dip down.”
Port Angeles’ defense was just as imposing in its own third of the field.
The Riders had a premier goalkeeper in four-year starter Jaime Mendenhall — sophomore Kevin Peterson backed him up — as well as capable defenders led by sweeper Matt Clark and Justin Pitman.
“Me and [Clark] just had an unspoken language,” said Mendenhall, who played for two years at Skagit Valley Community College.
Added Clark, “Most of the credit there for the field management really goes to [Mendenhall]. He was excellent at that.”
Together, the group amassed 13 shutouts in 21 games in 2000, none bigger than the team’s 2-0 upset of Decatur in the 4A state quarterfinals.
Mendenhall had a key save on a second half penalty kick in that game, one of many the 5-foot-10 keeper came up with during the season. (He actually had a game earlier that year against Bainbridge in which he had two penalty saves.)
“If you ask me, a lot of the teams we played in the playoffs outplayed us,” Trussell said. “Jaime saved us with his ability back there.”
Of course, orchestrating it all was Soule.
Gifted with a roster filled with developed soccer IQs and multisport athletes, the former Roughrider coach harnessed those talents with a structured and disciplined program.
“He did a heck of a job just keeping everybody’s head in the right place,” Clark said. “He made respect and integrity the centerpiece of all things.
“He was really good at getting us to do what he wanted us to do.”
“In the high school game so many people are subbing constantly, and he did that in the midfield. But in the other parts of the field he was good at letting those sides play for 30 or 40 minutes so they could really establish rhythm. I think that was helpful.”
Port Angeles didn’t trail an opponent until the 4A semifinals, reeling off a 18-0-1 start heading into the final weekend in May.
Once the Riders did go behind 1-0 to Mead of Spokane in the semis at the Kiggins Bowl in Vancouver, Rick Smith responded with a pair of goals, and Doherty and Jordan Siemens added a goal apiece.
The 4-2 win put Port Angeles in the finals, where it met the Snohomish Panthers.
The two teams played to a 0-0 tie through one half before the Panthers caught a break on a defensive miscommunication between Mendenhall and defender Chris Ochs.
A long throw-in was headed weakly to the far post.
Ochs ran to get in front of the ball but turned away at the last moment, thinking Mendenhall would grab it with his hands. The slow bouncing ball trickled just past Mendenhall’s hands and Port Angeles eventually lost 1-0.
“It was a really weak goal,” said Ochs, who took full responsibility for it despite other players’ protests. “I really thought that it should have been 0-0.
“Who knows what would have happened in overtime and everything, but if it would have gone to penalty shots, it would have been the perfect way to end the season [since the team practiced PKs at the end of every practice that year].”
Even still, the Riders’ second-place finish was the best in school history.
Only two other Port Angeles teams — the ’86 girls basketball team and ’66 boys basketball squad — have ever reached a championship game. (Both lost.)
And there isn’t a single Port Angeles boys soccer team before or since that’s won a one state playoff game, let along three in a row. (The ’85, ’87 and ’99 teams all lost first-round games.)
Current head coach Chris Saari — an assistant coach that year — took over the program from Soule in 2004.
His teams have yet to even reach the postseason, due in large part to a lack of dedicated soccer talent like the 2000 squad had.
“That’s kind of the key for success,” Saari said. “If you expect to be successful, you can’t just play soccer two months out of the year.
“There’s been a few teams that have played at Storm King, but not at the same level that [the 2000 team did]. There hasn’t been exactly the same talent and dedication.”