After a 13-12 loss in a wildcard game against Apple Valley May 22, girls’ ultimate head coach Seija Stratton said having few players on the bench created difficulty in an otherwise good game.

“It went well, it was a bit difficult,” Stratton said. “We were low on subs. There were some conflicts. There was an orchestra concert and some other miscellaneous conflicts, so we only ended up having four subs for the game, but it was a really good game.”

Senior captain Esther Gendler said she believes the team played well despite the lack of subs.

“I think that our team played really well together and Apple Valley is a really good team so we kept up with them and played really well,” Gendler said. “I think under the circumstances we played really hard and we did well against that team.”

Stratton said despite the loss she takes pride in the team’s performance.

“Everyone pushed themselves to the limit and unfortunately we did not win,” Stratton said. “We went into the game as the underdogs and they ran up a few points on us in the middle of the game that it was hard to come back from.”

Gendler said the team attempted a new style of offense in the game, which she thinks worked well.

“We tried a new offense, which is split-stack. That’s something we had never played in a game before and we tried it because they do a weird poach defense,” Gendler said. “I think it worked really well. Since we were just jumping into it I think the team did a really good job with that.”

According to Gendler, the team performed less successfully on defense.

“I think we could’ve done a bit better on defense. They were really fast so if we would have covered them better deep we could have prevented them from scoring a lot,” Gendler said.

Stratton said the loss determined Park will play in division two for the State tournament June 2-3 at the Blaine Soccer Complex.