Boys Soccer: Lake Washington Reaches State for First Time Since 2002

After his team started the season 1-5, Lake Washington boys soccer head coach Shaun Warner held a team meeting and asked his players to come up with a goal for the rest of the season. His players selected the lofty goal of finishing above .500 on the season.

Turns out they sold themselves way short.

Merlin Granados scored in the second minute of the game to set the tone and Lake Washington dominated Ingraham 6-1 on Saturday afternoon at Interbay Field in Seattle to secure the program's first state tournament bid since 2002.

The Kangs seemed as far away as possible from this moment just two weeks into the season. Lake Washington was dominated in its first six games by a cumulative 20-2 margin before starting its remarkable run. The Kangs enter the state tournament on Tuesday 12-1-1 over their last fourteen games, including three straight do-or-die wins in the playoffs.

"They started buying into each other," Warner said of his team's surprising turnaround. "They became a team, they started liking each other, they started working hard for each other."

Afterwith a 1-0 victory, Lake Washington set out to prove that it was a better ball-handling team than the one that surrendered 70 percent of the possession to the Islanders. The Kangs dominated control of the ball from the first minute, controlling the middle of the field with ease.

"After reading some of the article about how Mercer Island dominated the play, they wanted to show that they could possess the ball and play against anybody and they did," Warner said.

Granados got Lake Washington rolling almost immediately, taking a pass from Adam Krebs on the right side of the field and finishing the shot in the left side of the net to give the Kangs a 1-0 lead 1:30 into the game.

"We just came out ready to play," Granados said. "We play as a team...you get results playing as a team."

Granados added his second goal 14 minutes later, putting in a follow after Krebs' free-kick shot was initially blocked in the 16th minute.

Lake Washington added two more before halftime, getting its third goal on a Jordan Cox diving header off of a Krebs corner-kick in the 36th minute. Jason Curlanis followed two minutes later, putting in a short shot after a low cross from Liam Keller to put the Kangs up 4-0 and officially end any hopes Ingraham had.

"We came out excited and we were ready to go," Warner said.

Jared Eckhardt added a goal in the 44th minute and Jason Curlanis finished off the Lake Washington scoring with a 59th-minute goal off an assist from freshman Aung Ta. Ta was a force in the middle of the field all day, delighting the Kangs crowd with a number of flashy moves and a seemingly endless amount of energy.

"First day of tryouts, we saw him and I was like 'he's going to be something special,'" Warner said of Ta. "He's a very good player. He does things with the ball where I don't know how he does it."

Ingraham tallied its lone goal in the 73rd minute, as Noah Makela put in a header off a Clark Murray corner. Lake Washington finished the game with just nine players on the field, as Warner elected not to replace two players who asked for subs.

Lake Washington will play the winner of Pasco/Southridge in the first round of the tournament. Lake Washington has made three state tournaments in boys soccer, but has never won a state playoff game, something it hopes will change next week.

"I don't know a whole lot about (Pasco or Southridge)," Warner said. "I know they were both 4A last year, like we were, so it will be a battle. I'm just excited for these guys."