Vail Christian girls soccer wins regular-season finale

RANGELY — Vail Christian girls soccer is going to practice today.

The Saints finished the season with an emphatic 6-0 win at Rangely on Wednesday afternoon.

A team with a 4-7 record may not seem to have a playoff future, but the Saints are ranked No. 15 in the current maxpreps.com rankings and 12 schools will qualify for the first 2A state tournament.

‘BE PREPARED’

“We’re practicing tomorrow,” Saints coach Lauren Mutter said. “We’re going to be prepared just in case. I don’t want them to sit for four days and then have one day to prepare for a possible playoff game. We’re going to be prepared.”

It is likely a long shot for Vail Christian to make the postseason, but better safe than sorry. That the Saints do have remote playoff chances says a lot about how far this bunch has come in 2015.

Vail Christian went from 0-11 to 4-7 this spring. The Saints were competitive in nine of their 11 games and lost three games (Aspen, Roaring Fork and the Colorado Rocky Mountain School) by a total of four goals.

There’s no question that Saints soccer is headed in the right direction after some tough seasons.

‘SOCCER EXPERIENCE’

Freshman Jessie Raitt is apparently very good at putting a projectile in some form of netting, be it basketball or soccer. She had a hat trick against the Panthers. Keelin Robinson scored twice and Morgan Calton rang up another marker.

“We’re going to lose three seniors (Robinson, Nina Ferzacca and Rita Sun), but we do have a ton of the team coming back and a lot more soccer experience. The girls who are juniors now have been with me since we started. They’ve gone from never-evers to becoming great soccer players, and that’s going to help us.”

Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 970-748-2934 and cfreud@vaildaily.com.