After a great season, which ended in a disappointing loss in a shoot out against Bishop Blanchet, 12 seniors from the West Seattle girls soccer team will be graduating, many of which will never play soccer again.

"Season-wise we ended up as one of the most improved teams in the league," said Kevin Fieser, West Seattle first-year varsity coach. "We went nine in two and one and ended up doing really well."

The graduating seniors said they were expected to not be as successful this season after losing several seniors the year before. However, this past season the girls had the ability to lead the team to play, win and try even harder to prove doubters wrong.

"The varsity seniors realized they needed to build the program and keep it up, they went out of there way to work with junior varsity teammates, such as staying after school to help each other with homework or staying late after practice to help each other on skills," said Fieser.

The senior girls said what they would miss the most about the team and the season would be the chance to spend time with each other everyday.

"We'll miss practice and hanging out with everyone," said senior co-captain, Alex Ormsby. "Everyone is really close on the teams so it's really hard to leave it."

With up to three or four college coaches coming out to see the seniors girls play, Tanya Tarabochia who is still debating on what school she's choosing and Elizabeth Perkins who is shooting for Northwest plan on playing soccer in college next year.

With the loss of 12 seniors this year, Fieser still has faith in the returning girls, five of which were starters this past season.

"There's a lot of quality and depth in the program, the senior class has established a winning attitude and they've pushed the younger girls to work up to that," he said. "The girls that will be coming up and staying are all willing to work and we're a hard working team. I see us competing for metro and competing for the division title. We'll be winning games that we aren't expected to win."

"I think that since no one is expecting us to be good we can take that attitude and inspire ourselves to work harder. We can show everyone up and make them see we still have it," said junior Katelyn Elder. "It's up to us to come together as a team."

Allison Espiritu may be reached at 783-1244 or allisone@robinsonnews.com.