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Throughout her four years as a starter on Olympia High School’s girls soccer team, Fesenbek’s position changed year to year. She’s played outside midfielder, forward, defender, then back to forward – the position she loves.
Her versatility is what coach Tessa Effland was looking for when needing to fill a vacant position because of injury or necessity.
This season, Fesenbek, a senior and The Olympian’s All-Area girls soccer player of the year, moved back to forward and wreaked havoc on opposing defenses. She led the Class 4A Narrows League in scoring with 28 goals and 12 assists, helping the Bears to a third-place finish in the league and back to the playoffs after a one-year hiatus.
What makes Fesenbek stand out is her speed. In addition to soccer, Fesenbek is a sprinter on the track and field team, specializing in the 100, 200 and 400 meters. Her time in the 100-meter dash, 12.66 seconds, ranks fourth in school history, while she is sixth in the 400 (58.42) and seventh in the 200 (26.09).
Last year, after Fesenbek spent her 2009 sophomore season as a forward, Effland asked her to move to defender after an injury to a teammate.
Doing what was best for the team, Fesenbek agreed without hesitation. She played well, despite the team missing the playoffs with an 8-5-3 record. She earned first-team all-4A Narrows honors, but admitted playing the last line of defense was stressful.
“I like playing forward,” Fesenbek said. “You get the opportunity to score and help people score and create goals for the team.”
While she was happy with what she accomplished individually, Olympia’s season ended in the 4A West Central/Southwest bi-district tournament in a winner-to-state game against Tahoma. While the Bears had opportunities to score, they couldn’t punch one in, and lost to Tahoma in a shootout.
“I wish we had gone further and made it to state,” Fesenbek said.
One of the biggest wins came against league champion and 4A state semifinalist Bellarmine Prep, which Olympia hadn’t defeated since 2006. Fesenbek scored a goal in that win, and her 28 goals were more than half of the team’s total of 51 – second-most in the league behind Bellarmine.
Fesenbek attributed the season’s success to the offseason commitment by dozens of players to speed and weight-training workouts throughout the summer. That helped Bears post a 10-4-3 record, their most wins since 2008 (12).
“(The summer workouts) really helped, because high school soccer is really physical,” Fesenbek said. “Everybody was able to hold their own. We got to know all of each other and were able to click well as a team a lot earlier. It was a lot, but it was all worth it.”
Meg Wochnick: 360-754-5473 mwochnick@theolympian.com
