Girls soccer defeats Blue Valley 1-0
The team improves to a 2-1-1 record after the hard fought victory
April 7, 2017
After a low-scoring, back-and-forth game, the girls soccer team defeated Blue Valley on the road 1-0 on Thursday, April 6.
Neither team was able to maintain possession, resulting in only one goal the entire game for the Lady Jaguars.
Going into the game, senior midfielder Haley Freeman was hoping to be able to move the ball around and be precise with passes.
“Our offensive strategy was to really just keep the ball and possess well,” Freeman said. “We also wanted to be smart with our passes moving [up the field] and not trying to force the through ball every single time, and making the runs from the outside in.”
The lone goal of the game was on a penalty kick scored by Freeman 21 minutes into the first half. Freeman knew she had to score because she thought she couldn’t “let [her] team down.’”
Head coach Arlan Vomhof was impressed by the team’s performance based on Blue Valley’s record and some pre-game adjustments he had to make.
“We knew it was going to be a tough match because they were 3-1 coming in,” Vomhof said. “We thought it was going to be tough, especially since we lost to Olathe North the way that we did. We also had some injuries, with [senior defender Kacie] Kinley was out and some other people feeling under the weather. But we’ve been working on some stuff this week and wanted to go out and do what we needed to do and we did.”
Since the game was so low-scoring, Freeman knew that the team had to play better defense than in previous games and match the aggressiveness of the opposition.
“We were trying to get back, stay with our marks, especially on their corner kicks,” Freeman said. “It was rough because every single time they play over the top and the backside. We just had to be first to the ball every single time and that was our main goal. The other games we weren’t first to the ball every single time and tonight we did a much better job of doing that.”
After the team secured the victory, Vomhof believes that his team is in a great position for success even with the amount of inexperience on the team.
“We’re a very young team,” Vomhof said. “We’ve got some young girls still trying to figure out how things work. They’re not used to playing U-18 which is what they’re playing now. We’re still getting there. We’ve got some girls that needed some confidence and this will help. We’ve got a long ways to go but I think we’re in a great spot right now.”
The girls soccer team next plays Turner at home on Monday, April 10.
