The Ballard Beavers delivered a dominating performance on Wednesday evening in their first win against Nathan Hale since 2011 in a 16-3 victory at Ballard High School.

Both teams stepped onto Ballard field on a mostly sunny evening with over 15mph winds. This game immediately got away from Nathan Hale as they suffered 11 total goals in the first half and lost three players to injuries before the end of the game. Ballard was white hot on the field winning nearly every face-off, grabbing every ground ball and creating a storm of shots that the Raiders could not escape before their eventual defeat.

Ballard had many stars in this game with seven different players scoring goals in this explosive offense. Junior midfielder and attackman Guss Simpson put up 4 goals for his second game in a row as he is quickly becoming Ballard’s top scoring player. Freshman attackman Joe Zahner and junior midfielder Cooper Bassett bagged 3 goals a-piece as the Beaver’s are about to see one of their best seasons in years.

Anyone that sees the final score should know that Ballard scored 16 goals out of a whopping 38 shots. So why isn’t the score 38-3? The Raiders can thank junior goalie Ethan Sirotzki for saving nearly half of these shots as he stood tall in the cage against overwhelming adversity.

Ballard opened the game with six goals in the first quarter and five goals in the second. The fast lead put Nathan Hale on their toes as they failed to desperately clear the ball from their side of the field. This brought on a lot of mistakes as Ballard capitalized on unsettled defenses and mid-pass turnovers. Nathan Hale’s junior attackman and midfielder Charlie MacIntire saved his team from an embarrassing first half shut-out with a goal in the last 10 seconds of the half.

The Raiders came into the second half with a cool head as they played with greater patience and focus on ball control. This awarded them the first goal of the half as Ballard found themselves on the defensive. This only provided an opportunity for the Beavers to show off their stick check skills as they were disrupting the Raiders at every opportunity making it difficult for them to find their rhythm.

Nathan Hale had a successful third quarter, only allowing one goal while also maintaining possession of the ball. They inevitably ran out of gas as Ballard surged passed them scoring four more goals in the final quarter to seal the game at 16-3.

“For us tonight, the most important was everybody was shooting. We run an offense where everybody runs, we come from all different directions so we don’t have a single guy we always go to.” Explained Ballard head coach Don Preston. “It really is a total team effort, we’ve revamped the entire program and it’s taken over a year to get here. So it’s nice to see that it’s all coming together.”

Coach Preston said it best as everyone marveled at a revitalized Beaver team that finished 2-7 last season with only 69 total goals. They are already on track to record over double last year’s goals for this season with the way they are playing. Nathan Hale will get its chance for revenge this year when they host Ballard at Jane Addams Field on April 20.

Nathan Hale moves to 1-3 as they head to another tough road game against an undefeated Seattle Academy (3-0) team on Friday night. Ballard moves to 2-0 as they prepare to face West Seattle (1-2) at Moshier Park on Monday night. Will West Seattle be the first team to score more than 6 goals against this Beaver defense? They will need to if they plan to slow down this steam rolling offense.

Story by Michael Thornbloom