The Great Wall of Kentwood

Mono forced the hand of Aaron Radford.

But Kentwood’s girls soccer coach certainly had a nice deck from which to choose at the beginning of the season, when he learned starting goalkeeper Courtney Johnson would miss some time with mononucleosis.

“I didn’t actually have an idea of what I was going to do,” said Radford of his goalkeeping conundrum. “Courtney wasn’t cleared to practice (when the season began) and was just getting her energy back.”

The fifth-year Kentwood coach, however, had an ace up his sleeve in unheralded junior Megan Walburn.

Together, Johnson and Walburn have become the South Puget Sound League’s toughest tandem, allowing a total of just four goals during the regular season.

“We’ve definitely got a pretty strong set of goalkeepers,” said Radford, whose Conquerors completed a perfect regular season last Friday with a 12-0 win over Kent-Meridian. “Strong enough to where I am comfortable switching them at half. I don’t feel less confident about either one.”

It has showed on the field.

Johnson, a sophomore, missed only the opening game of the year, a 4-1 victory against Federal Way. She has split duties between the pipes with the incumbent Walburn every game since.

The situation could have turned ugly early. After all, Johnson helped lead the Conquerors to the state quarterfinals a year ago. Instead, it has been quite the contrary.

“I think it has worked really well,” said Johnson, a second-team all-leaguer a year ago. “It’s different than last year, but definitely something I’ve enjoyed. I don’t see any reason why we’d change it.”

Walburn agreed.

“At first, I thought it might be an ordeal because she started all last year and I thought we might be bumping heads,” said Walburn, who, during tryouts, vowed to make this her final shot at making varsity. “But we don’t. We get along, support each other and have a good time.”

Judging by the numbers — and, of course, by the victories — the good times have rolled into a perfect situation for Radford and the top-ranked Conquerors.

How good has the Johnson-Walburn wall been?

The Kentwood duo entered Wednesday night’s South Puget Sound League championship match against Beamer on pace not only to break the school record for least goals allowed (10 in 2005), but to shatter it.

They had yielded just four goals in 16 matches entering Wednesday’s contest. That’s more than 1,200 minutes of near-flawless goalkeeping, a run that includes a streak of 12 straight shutouts, which began on Sept. 16 and didn’t end until Oct. 25.

And if history is any indication, Walburn and Johnson should establish a new school mark during the next two weeks as playoff soccer is traditionally rather low-scoring.

But the two are hardly taking credit these days for the string of goose eggs or even the wins.

“As keepers, we haven’t even had to make that many saves,” Johnson conceded. “A lot of it has been about our defense closing down (on the dribbler) and making our job easy.”

The defensive combination of Rachel Bindl, Andrea Jensen, Cari Witruk and Dana Wareham — the four girls who serve as Johnson and Walburn’s protectors — certainly have done just that. Kentwood’s unbeaten run through the league and its defensive suffocation is as much a credit to them as it is to the team’s goalkeepers.

All four backliners agree that the success has hinged on chemistry.

“We really work together well,” said Bindl, a junior. “We played together all of last year, so we have experience together. (Not getting credit for a shutout) isn’t that big of a deal as long as we keep winning.”

That’s something Kentwood has done plenty of during the past four years as it enters play today on the brink of its fourth straight state berth.

And though shutouts are nice, as the season nears a close, this group has only one thing on its mind.

“We as a team want to go all the way,” Wareham said. “And we think we can do it.”