Titan girls soccer opens season with blowout wins

Playing this Friday on WCU turf at 7 p.m.

[ by Than Acuff ]

After missing last season completely due to the onset of COVID, the Crested Butte Titan girls soccer team opened this season on fire cruising to a couple of blowout wins over Center and Del Norte this past weekend.

The Titans’ league presents its challenges as on one end of the spectrum are Crested Butte, Ridgway and Telluride. On the other end of the spectrum are teams like Center and Ignacio. The Titans opened with Center on Friday, May 7 and the team was excited to get everyone back on the field for a game.

“We were fired up and really excited to play at home and even a little nervous playing in front of fans,” says coach Julia Kidd.

Then they got their first bit of bad news as it turned out Center would only be able to bring eight players for the game.

“I told the girls at game time but they were still ready to play,” says Kidd.

Then the officials intervened asking Kidd and her team to take it easy on Center even before the game started.
“We were trying to figure out the appropriate thing to do,” explains Kidd. “I just told them to work on possession and see what happens. It was still an opportunity to play a game.”

Ultimately the Titans decided to start with 10 players and go from there. After an erratic opening 10 minutes still trying to walk the line between competing and sportsmanship, the Titans started scoring and as they continued to score, Kidd started pulling players off the field. Once they went up 7-0 playing with just eight on the field, the officials instructed Kidd that the Titans then had to play one player less than Center. Kidd obliged and continued to follow that to the point when Crested Butte was up 9-0 and playing with just five players on the field against Center’s eight.

Center then managed to poke a goal in but the Titans responded with two more to go up 11-1 forcing officials to enforce the mercy rule and end the game. Stevee Reinhardt led the Titans with three goals, Leigh Harpel netted two and six other Titans scored one goal each.

“I was pulling off our best players and mixing up positions, it was really weird,” says Kidd. “It was kind of a mess, not a beautiful game at all.”

The Titans then had to refocus after the Center game and ramp back up to face Del Norte the next day on Saturday, May 8. Del Norte sits somewhere in the middle of that spectrum as they typically have a fairly competitive program and can give the top three teams a run for their money so Kidd was looking forward to their first challenge of the season.

“We were expecting a game and we showed up ready,” says Kidd.

Unfortunately, Del Norte had similar roster issues to Center and only had 10 players for the game. The Titans started with 11 and struck in the opening minute of the game. They built a 5-0 lead rather quickly, pulled a player off and went into halftime up 6-0.
The Titans still focused on playing a quality game based on possession and they eventually hit the 10-goal mercy rule once again to win 10-0. Ellie O’Neal led the scorers with a hat trick while Hazie McNellis, Maddie Bogard and Reinhardt scored two each with Leigh Harpel adding in a solo strike.

“We played a much better game,” says Kidd. “I would have liked better competition but we did get a chance to shake the rust off after not playing a game for two years.”

Crested Butte has a big weekend ahead as they will host Ridgway on Friday, May 14 on the Western Colorado University turf field at 7 p.m. under the lights. They then head to Telluride the next day for another stout opponent. Both Telluride and Ridgway had similar results against similar competition in their first weekend of play so this weekend will give all three teams a glimpse of who may take over the top spot.

“This weekend is huge,” says Kidd. “It’ll be good to have some competition.”