Darryl Gonyea was sure about one thing Wednesday night: his Sammamish Totems boys soccer team didn’t come ready to play on the most important night of the season.

The Totems fell behind Mercer Island early and couldn’t right the ship, falling to the Islanders 3-1 in the KingCo 3A Tournament championship game.

Perrin Guyer scored on a rebound just six minutes into the game to put the Islanders up 1-0 and set the tone for the rest of the game.

“Mercer Island had a lot of injuries and I don’t know if our boys just thought it’d be easy, but you can’t do that in this league,” Gonyea said. “You’ll get run over. We gave up that flukey goal early that put us behind and that left us pressing the rest of the game.”

The Islanders were playing without several players, including standout senior Nick Ward, who tore his ACL during Monday’s game against Juanita.

But Mercer Island (11-3-2) looked anything but hurt Wednesday, as they set the pace for the game, getting several chances on Sammamish keepers Stuart Ellsworth and Issac Velarde.

“They were pushing their guys and their work rate was better than us,” Gonyea said. “We tried to move some things around, but that’s what happens when you get down a goal early.”

Mercer Island struck again in the 37th minute when Danny Strome streaked down the sideline and beat Ellsworth on a low shot. Less than two minutes later Islanders defender Taylor Ward kept it 2-0 when he headed out what looked like a sure goal for the Totems.

Little over ten minutes later Strome picked up another loose ball and buried it past Velarde.

This time, Sammamish responded. Barely a minute later, Nassor Salum drilled a 30-yard laser that just barely cleared the head of Islanders keeper Nicolas Terentjev to cut the deficit to 3-1 in the 51st minute.

Unfortunately for Sammamish it was all the offense the Totems (10-3-3) could muster.

“We didn’t have enough pressure,” Gonyea said. “We don’t really have forwards, more midfielders playing at forward and that’s been our Achille’s heel all season, being able to finish up there.”

With the win, the Islanders will host the No.3 team from the Metro League Saturday in a loser-out, winner-to-state game.

“It was a good season,” Gonyea said. “I would have liked to at least gone out playing our best game. That’s what is disappointing to me.”