DELTA — The phrase "smooth sailing" wouldn't exactly sum up Bear River's 2009 girls soccer season.

The Bears have faced a number of obstacles along the way — an inordinate number of injuries, construction issues near their soccer field and a schedule filled with a bunch of tough teams — and that all happened before Bear River even got into the regular season and had to try to get points in arguably Class 3A's toughest region.

Through everything, though, Bear River's players never put their heads down, and they showed in the opening round of the 3A tournament on Wednesday that they've still got plenty of fight left in the tank.

Forced to play Region 12 champ Delta on the road in the first round after it finished as Region 11's fourth seed, Bear River quite simply took care of business. The Bears scored twice at the beginning of each half and coasted the rest of the way en route to a commanding 4-1 win over Delta.

"Our team's been having a rough season. We've had injuries, construction (and) so many things, but we've still been practicing hard and playing hard," said Bear River central midfielder Laura Schow. "And so when it came down to Delta, we didn't want to look past anything. We just wanted to come and play hard, and that's what we did for the most part."

Bear River will face Wasatch on the road in the quarterfinals on Saturday at 1 p.m.

It didn't take long on Wednesday to figure out that the Bears would be heading into the second round.

They moved into a dangerous position almost straight from the opening kickoff, and just over a minute later they found the back of the net.

A sweet ball was played through to striker Bryn Kindred, who took a touch and then fired her shot across the face of goal and in.

Kaitlyn Wilcox doubled Bear River's lead six minutes later, and the Bears were off to the races.

They controlled play throughout the rest of the first half, and they put the game away just after halftime, as Maree Richardson and Kindred each grabbed early second-half goals.

From there, coach Bear River Gene Wilcox got some of his reserves into the match before Emily Christensen scored a well-taken consolation goal for Delta late in the game.

On this occasion, it was hard to overstate the importance of Bear River's dominant start.

"We figured if we could come out and get on them right away, that we could kind of send a message that we're not gonna hang around and let it be close," said Wilcox. "A team like (Delta), you could kind of tell that they're inexperienced, but if you let them hang around, they get a break here or there (and) all the sudden it's a dogfight.

"We didn't want it to be that, so we kind of figured if we could get on them early, it would maybe take their wind out of their sails."

e-mail: drasmussen@desnews.com