The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

YAKIMA - The new Waitsburg-Prescott soccer team beat the socks off much more veteran players over the weekend, taking opponents by surprise and thrilling head coach Rick Hamilton. "I'm very pleased so far," he said. "I think the kids are starting to gel, starting to play together and have an idea of

I'm wanting."

The Tigers squashed Wal­la Walla Valley Academy in an away game Thursday. The final score was 8-2. "I played a lot of my JV even against WWVA," Ham­ilton said. "We made two little mistakes, giving them the penalty on one shot and one mistake where the goalie and the guys on the field weren't talking, but that's simple stuff. That's a fine thing to have at the beginning of a season." On Saturday, the Tigers went up against Yakima's Riverside Christian High School Cougars. The Cou­gars are ranked as the top soccer team east of the mountains, but this didn't scare WP's young Cardinals. The Cougars scored one point at the top of the game, "but our defense did an ex­tremely good job," Hamilton said. "They had one very good player, but once we saw that and shut him down, he didn't get another shot the rest of the game." The Tigers defeated this top-ranking team 4-1. "I don't think they were really prepared for us," Ham­ilton said. "We're kind of the sleeper in the bunch. Nobody knows what to expect since we're in our first year." The Tigers play Riverside Christian again on Friday at 2 p.m. This will be the team's first home game, which will take place on the soccer fields in Prescott. "We would love to see all the townspeople from Prescott and Waitsburg come to cheer us on," Hamilton said. Prescott will be letting school out early so students and teachers can go see the game.

"We think Riverside's go­ing to come after us pretty hard this next game," he said. "We burst their bubble a little, so they're going to come after us for revenge."