Curtis’ Morgan Weaver earns 3rd consecutive TNT All-Area Girls Soccer Player of the Year honor

Morgan Weaver entered her senior year as The News Tribune’s two-time All-Area girls soccer player of the year. She had combined to score 36 goals her sophomore and junior seasons.

But Weaver’s final season at Curtis High School was undoubtedly her finest — she scored 36 goals with 11 assists.

It won’t be remembered only for the Washington State commit’s breakneck scoring pace, that she was held without a goal in only one match this season, or that she had three four-goal matches. Weaver also led Curtis to a share of the 4A SPSL South title for the third consecutive year and to the 4A state quarterfinals for the first time since her freshman season.

And for the third consecutive year, she is the All-Area player of the year.

“I was just going to do what I could to do my best,” Weaver said. “If I could get a score, I score. If I can get an assist, I’ll take the assist.

“I don’t know what it was this year. I just didn’t have a care in the world. I just wanted to come out here and play some soccer.”

In past years Weaver has been fast — they call her “Baby Deer” — but this year she was faster. She also got stronger and more focused, Curtis coach Frank Hankel said.

“A girl to a woman,” Hankel said.

Hankel pointed to the team picture sitting by a classroom window of Weaver on Curtis’ 2012 team.

“She looks like a freshman,” Hankel said. “But you look at her now and she looks like a young woman. And we’ve also seen that maturity. She’s pretty close to heading for WSU next year. She’s watched them play and she’s realized that you got to bring your best every day. Because they have 25 other players who could take your spot.”

“I’ve seen her more as a leader,” said Curtis’ junior forward Sariah Keister. “(She was) coming in and always being positive and telling us what we need to do and riding us so we can become better.”

Weaver went from hunter to the hunted this year. Good teams designed their game plan around Weaver.

She scored four goals in Curtis’ 5-2 win over Puyallup on Sept. 29. But Puyallup still tied with Curtis for the league title after it then shut Curtis out, 2-0, on Oct. 20 and was the only team to hold Weaver without a goal.

How? Puyallup coach Matt White said he shook up his defense, using four defensive midfielders — including Saige Lyons, who is Puyallup’s best forward and Weaver’s teammate on her Washington Premier club team — along with two deeper defenders.

That’s like taking Marshawn Lynch off of the Seattle Seahawks offense and playing him on defense.

“I went, ‘Well, we need to win the game to have a shot at the league championships; if we don’t win it’s all done. Dude, let’s do something different,’ ” White said. “Fortunately Morgan also had an off game. If we had to do it again, I think we could do something close, but I don’t think we could hold her completely.

“And if all I did is stay our normal system and just pull Saige back, I don’t think we win the game. It literally required a change of system to not just man-mark Morgan with my best athlete, but it also required denial of service.”

Weaver scored goals in all three of Curtis’ postseason matches, including a penalty-kick victory over Kentridge, and she scored the go-ahead goal in the state quarterfinals against Issaquah — before the Vikings eventually lost 3-2.

Both opposing coaches spoke about their game plans to deny Weaver.

“Her first step is amazing,” White said. “And Morgan’s athleticism is off the charts. Most people go, ‘Well, we’ll man-mark her and we’ll shut her down that way.’ Well, that only applies if you have as good of an athlete.”

Weaver said she’s always loved soccer. Her father was a soccer coach and she said he would carry her as a baby in one of those front-side carrying pouches while he would coach a match.

Of the 89 goals she scored in her four years at Curtis — with her freshman year being the first the school allowed freshmen to play varsity sports — she said her favorite came in the 76th minute of a 5-0 win against Rogers on Oct. 17.

Weaver scored on a header from freshman Isabella Weaver, her sister.

“I ran right to her after it went in,” Weaver said. “It was so special because we have never been able to play on the same team before.”

But with all the soccer balls Weaver’s struck into goals over the past four years, the side Hankel said gets lost is off the field.

His 3-year-old son, Aiden, is her biggest fan. He’s standing next to her in almost all her team pictures.

“He’s a shy kid by nature, but that’s his favorite player. He loves her,” Hankel said. “And I think that’s something that people don’t see, is that she has a big heart.”

Curtis never did reach its first state championship match since losing to Hope Solo’s Richland squad in 1998. But Weaver still helped Curtis reach the state tournament four times, win three league titles and twice make the state quarterfinals.

“She’s such a competitor,” Hankel said. “She wanted it this year, and she wanted it badly. I think that was one of the biggest things with her was she was not just bringing that intensity to games but to practices, and pushing her teammates. I think it’s that old saying that good players become great players by making others around them better — and that’s what she did.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Curtis’ Morgan Weaver earns 3rd consecutive TNT All-Area Girls Soccer Player of the Year honor."